


Own Flesh And Blood

by totonyo



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: ASZ AU, Alexandria Safe-Zone, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Coparenting, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Richonne - Freeform, Slow Build, group feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:39:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7056610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totonyo/pseuds/totonyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In-between-scenes snippets following Rick, Michonne and Carl from the first time they meet in Season 3 to Season 6's "The Next World," mostly compliant with TV show canon, then we veer into an ASZ alternate universe (I know, how original of me!). Negan doesn't exist, no major character deaths, no horror, no mayhem, just broken people finding their way in a hostile environment, lots of hurt/comfort and surrogate!family feels along the way. It would be fluff if it didn't involve some not so fluffy PTSD recovery, graphic descriptions of canon-typical violence, possibly other unpleasant things. Definitely a Rick/Michonne love story above all else, but it's a slow build and not totally centered on romance; partnership and family dynamics are so much fun to play with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_\- Between Seasons 1 and 2 -_

 

 _You carry the dead with you,_ Michonne remembers hearing from someone. She can’t remember if it was her dad or someone from church.

In her darkest nights, when she's halfway between asleep and awake, vivid memories will blend into her dreams: Andre’s body going limp in her arms when she found the courage to put him to rest; Mike and Terry crying out in pain, bleeding out of gruesome holes where mouthfuls of flesh had been torn off; ignoring their screams as she put all of her strength into each lethal stab to the skulls of snarling monsters swarming into the camp. That night had ended with her collapsing, covered in blood and dirt, next to her son's freshly dug grave. Among the dozens of corpses surrounding her, only two were still moving, struggling against the ropes binding their mutilated torsos to to the trunk of a tree.

The two of them follow her everywhere, now, snarling helplessly as she tugs on their chain.

 _Carry the dead with you._ She thought she understood what the saying meant when her grandmother's death left her staggering with grief. Since she started taking it literally, she finds she has a whole new appreciation for it. 

_*_

Michonne sleeps every night clutching the handle of her sword. It’s a shallow, unsatisfying sleep that makes her head ache throughout the day. If she finds an empty house with a decent sightline, she will often sit with her back against the wall facing the front door, sword laid over her thighs. She’s always hyperaware, ready to jump to her feet and unsheathe her sword at the first clanging of the cans strung up around the perimeter of the yard as a makeshift alarm system.

Using the sword has been getting easier. She’s getting the hang of it, likes the way the wind whistles against the blade when she swings it at full speed; likes that it feels like a fifth limb rather than a weapon. Beyond the fear and the adrenaline and the rage, there are times it feels like her movements were choreographed, her arms and feet knowing all the steps. Before all of this, forever ago, she had liked dancing. She has a vague memory of watching ballet at a theater, but doesn't know for sure whether it actually happened. Memories over a year old feel more like dreams, now. 

This is all she’s had for a long time: killing one after the other, digging her heels in and summoning all her strength as she spins and swings her blade, carving her way through a large group of them. The wet sound of blade cutting through rotting flesh and bone that so disgusted her in the beginning sounds like victory, now.

The quiet moments are the worst; there's nothing happening and it’s just her, alone with her thoughts. She focuses on the practical stiff: remaining supplies, the route to the nearest shelters, which territories she hasn’t explored yet. When it gets to be too much, if the gets desperate, she turns to her last resort: she shakes the strung up cans herself, bangs on them with her sword, drawing out the undead so she’ll have something to kill.

Killing them is the only thing worth staying alive for. 

 

_\- S03 Killer Within -  
_

 

Rick loses any clarity he had left when he is faced with the sight of Maggie, lips trembling, eyes swollen, tears rolling down her cheeks as she clutches a naked, crying newborn against her chest. She opens her mouth and a choked sound comes out, like she’s trying to get a word out and hold back a sob at the same time.

“R–rick,” she finally croaks out, and there is no need to finish. He knows what she’s saying. His legs are barely holding him up when he glances at Carl, standing next to her with a blank look on his face and a white-knuckled grip on his gun.

There is a negative space beside them where Lori should be standing, exhausted from childbirth but smiling, teary-eyed, undefeated, just like the day Carl was born. Rick knows the truth, that she is back there somewhere, a hole in her head, the fresh blood attracting every walker inside. They were tearing her flesh apart right now, and it’s too late to do anything.

He’s too late.

 *

He’s got Glenn pinned to the corridor wall in a fit of rage, pressing his forearm against Glenn’s throat. He has just enough sense left in him to let go before he actually chokes the kid, who is looking at him like he doesn’t recognize him, like he’s afraid of him, and Rick doesn’t care. It’s better this way. Better than him looking to Rick to solve his problems. Rick can’t solve any problems. Rick can’t save him. He can’t save anyone.

Time passes in a blur, his body detached from his mind, until he finds himself soaked from head to toe, covered in walker guts and blood. He killed every one in sight, anything that might have desecrated the body of the woman he failed to protect. He has no idea how long it’s been. Doesn’t even care about the baby outside. He can hear Shane shouting at him from a distance, “you can’t protect them – a broken woman and a weak child – ”

He curls up in a corner and sobs until he exhausts himself and dozes off.

  
*

Rick cautiously approaches Beth and the tiny, squirming bundle of blankets in her arms. He holds the baby for the first time: a girl, healthy, pale and blue-eyed. Rick starts analyzing her facial features before he can help himself, trying to find definite evidence that she’s his daughter. He thinks the shape of her nose is more like Shane’s than his, and her jawline––

He snaps himself out of it, coldly hands the child back to Beth, averting his eyes.

When he sleeps, he has nightmares. Carl watching Lori being eaten alive. It’s all he can see when he closes his eyes, and it takes away his appetite entirely. Hershel, Glenn and Maggie each try to get him to eat, they all look at him with pity and worry in their eyes and he can’t get rid of them fast enough.

Daryl takes a more aggressive approach.

“Rick, quit bein’ an asshole and eat some fuckin’ beans,” he shoves a warm open can of beans at him. Rick scowls and doesn’t answer. “What, you goin’ on a hunger strike?” Daryl scoffs. “Don’t make me shove it down your throat, man. I ain’t lettin’ you starve yourself.”

Rick glares, but knows a losing battle when he sees one. Daryl isn’t nearly as intimidated by him as any of the others. Rick swallows the whole goddamn can of beans, if only so they’ll all stop fussing over him and leave him the hell alone.

The second time he holds the baby, he has reached a strange state of calm, so emotionally exhausted and sleep deprived he has temporarily run out of grief. It will come back, he knows, but he will take this opportunity before it slips away from him. The baby girl’s eyelids flutter open as he holds her up at eye level, and this time he doesn’t see Shane, doesn’t see himself, either. He sees Lori. Lori’s nose. Lori’s eyes. Granted, he’s been seeing Lori everywhere these days, but this time, for once, he feels grounded in reality.

Doesn’t fucking matter, he realizes with a shuddering breath, hugging his daughter close. Doesn’t matter if she’s got Rick or Shane’s genes. Maggie brought the baby into this world, Daryl went to get her formula while Rick was off losing his shit, Hershel cared for her, Beth, still barely more than a child herself, cradles the baby girl with the grace of a mother. Glenn has already taken off with Maggie again to look for more formula. These people are all his family, they are all her family. He’d die for them, and they’d die for him, and that's what family was these days. Genes couldn’t matter less.

Rick isn’t sure where Carl got the name Judith, but it’s as good as any, he supposes – and the boy has earned this, he can name his sister whatever he wants. So, Rick’s daughter’s name is Judith. _Judith Grimes_ , born after the collapse of civilization.

The others look at her like she’s hope. After all the death they’d seen, so much life ending, a newborn child looks surreal. He was once terrified that whenever he looked at her he’d be reminded of that moment, that moment when he looked at Maggie with the baby in her trembling arms, looked at Carl’s pale expression, and knew.

But, now, finally, he gets it. He sees what they see in her – that maybe humanity has a future after all.

*  
  
He’s scanning the surroundings when he catches sight of a pair of dark eyes staring at him through the outer fence. The gaze is immediately distinguishable from the glazed over, predatory expressions on the faces of the carcasses clutching the fence, snarling and flailing. This is a mindful gaze, very much alive. The eyes belong to a young black woman, dreadlocks falling past her shoulders, skin glistening with sweat, clothes covered in blood. She is breathing heavily but the expression on her face is calm, she’s trying to read him as much as he’s trying to read her. The handle of a sword pokes out from behind her shoulder.

As soon as Rick realizes she’s camouflaged herself, her cover is blown. A gust of wind blows eastward and the walkers catch a whiff of her real scent. One by one they turn away from the fence and stagger toward her. She steps back, stumbles, clutches her leg in pain.

Carl takes off running, Rick screams his name and follows him, pulling out his gun.

The woman unsheathes a long, thin blade holstered to her back, and it’s a testament to how much crazy shit Rick has seen that it barely gives him pause. She’s favoring one leg, but she knows what she’s doing, the blade a lethal extension of her body as she cuts down one after another with the ease of someone who has long since gotten used to this. She’s clearly dangerous, deadly, and he doesn’t want dangerous and deadly anywhere near his kids. But she looks ready to pass out, and he’s pretty sure now that some of the blood on her clothes is her own. They either help or let her die.

Her knees fold and she collapses, eyes rolling back into her head.

When he wore a sheriff’s uniform, helping an injured woman would have been the easiest decision in the world. Once upon a time Rick was a man of honor, or at least he liked to think of himself that way. Those days are gone. She brought a basket of baby formula with her, and Glenn and Maggie aren’t back yet. That is no coincidence.

Rick has a million thoughts flashing through his mind as he carries the woman inside. She’s hurt, exhausted, barely holding on to consciousness. He puts her down near the cell he plans to lock her in once Hershel tends to her. She’s passed out cold. The others rush to get medical supplies, Daryl stands at his back, crossbow ready, just as suspicious of strangers as Rick is.

Rick splashes cold water on her face, and when she flinches awake, he tries to hush and say hi in the least threatening way he can muster, but she blinks at him, alarmed, and immediately reaches for the sword dropped on the ground a few feet away. Rick’s reflexes are faster, he kicks it away from her. It's a reminder she’s a threat he brought into their midst, and it'd be his responsibility to kill her if it came down to it. “We ain’t gonna hurt you unless you try somethin’ stupid,” he tells her sharply. She looks at him with fury in her eyes, which isn’t reassuring.

He decides he's gonna lock her up, and they're gonna rotate shifts guarding her cell. He's gonna gather all of his people and tell them, she makes one wrong move, you pull out your gun, she moves a second time, shoot her in the head.

This is his family and he's not taking any chances.

*

Michonne lies on pile of old blood-stained blankets, the gunshot wound bandaged by the one-legged old man. She’s going to get out of here somehow. When her head stops spinning, when the bright spots obscuring her vision disappear, then she can stand, and walk, hopefully. The throbbing pain in her leg doesn’t bother her as much as being locked in a cell like an animal. Without her sword she feels naked, vulnerable. She never fully appreciates the comfort of gripping the handle of a sharp blade until it’s taken away from her.

The leader looks like a hard man to put down. She has seen a madness in him that she recognizes, a madness that comes from grief and anger, the same madness that kept her alive and breathing all this time. That’s how she knows he won’t be easy to kill, if it comes down to it –she wouldn’t be, either. He’s got more than a few pounds on her, but that won’t matter if he’s asleep or has his back turned when she gets to him. She can stab him through the heart, or slash his throat, quick and quiet. She’d get one shot only. If she loses the element of surprise and ends up having to take him on one on one it'd take everything she had. In perfect health she’d be at a disadvantage; in this state she has no chance.

She remembers the gist of what he said to her. “Not gonna hurt you unless…”

She doesn’t buy it. Andrea’s out there somewhere, falling for the same lie from another alpha male wannabe. Then, again, Andrea was so far out of her mind she chose comfort over reality, over friendship. Loyalty is not something Michonne takes casually.

A random memory occurs to her. Her mother and her aunt yelling, calling each other awful names––it was a common occurrence. They’d stop talking for days, and then it was like nothing had happened. Soon they were at the mall together forcing their way through a sale crazed crowd buying Christmas gifts. _“She makes shit decisions, that batshit aunt of yours, but she’s family. When Christmas comes ‘round you put all the bullshit aside and face the fact that you’re stuck with one another, that’s the way family works.”_

There is no such thing as family now. Michonne lost that the night she lost her son. Yet she can’t stop thinking about the fact that Andrea is in a snake pit and doesn’t even know it.

Michonne saved Andrea’s life months ago and kept her alive in the winter, but Andrea kept Michonne sane, grounded. Andrea would talk to her about nothing in particular in the middle of the night when Michonne woke up sweaty and shaking from her usual nightmares, and never pushed her to talk about the many things Michonne wasn't ready to talk about. Before Andrea, she was a numb, silent creature wandering in the darkness with those two snarling behind her, a constant reminder of what she lost.

Michonne may not have any family left, but Andrea is the last person in the world she cares about, and if there's a chance to save her, to make her see, she has to try.

 *

She hears the baby's cry before she sees it. She thinks she’s hearing things––wouldn’t be the first time––but she turns and sees them huddled together around a skinny blonde girl with a whining infant in her arms. Michonne’s escape plots come to a sudden halt in her mind, no room for thoughts other than the sight in front of her. The kids Merle had taken back to Woodbury had a basket of baby formula, and even with the evidence right in front of her she found it hard to believe babies could still be born in a world where the dead ate the living.

She observes them as they talk, picking up a string of words every now and then. When she sees the leader pick the baby up from the girl’s arms and carefully put it in the hands of the small, malnourished silver-haired woman the archer rescued, she knows it's his child. She can barely make out the name “Judith.” A question is asked about a woman named Lori and everyone’s expression darkens, some of them holding back tears. None of these women look like they’ve given birth recently, so it’s a safe bet that was the child’s mother.

It dawns on her like a ton of bricks. Lori. Rick. Daryl. She’s heard those names before. Nights in front of a small fire, listening to Andrea's stories, distracting herself from dark thoughts.

She looks at them, their dirty, torn clothing, bags under their eyes, blood and grime all over them. Woodbury was fake. A badly disguised illusion created by a maniac, and one of the giveaways was the pristine cleanliness, how neat and tidy it was, everyone dressed up and smiling like it was business as usual. What she is seeing in front of her now is dirty, tragic, genuine.These were survivors, hardened by grief like her, but still human inside, still affectionate toward one another, still awed by the sight of a squirming infant. She sees the humanity in them the same way she saw the lack of it in the Governor.

She might have to revisit her kill-or-be-killed escape plan after all.

 

_\- After S03 Finale -  
_

Michonne voluntarily stays in a cell an entire night, a personal record, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep, reliving, in nightmares and flashbacks, the moment when Andrea pulled the trigger, and Michonne knelt by her corpse and sobbed, still clutching her friend's hand. She can’t stop hearing the sound of the gun going off, the wet sound of blood and grey matter spattering on the wall behind them.

She's come to hate the sight of the concrete ceiling above her bed. Even the tiniest noise makes her eyes fly open and her hand find the sword handle by the bed instinctively before she’s even fully conscious. Most of the time it’s just the sound of people, scared people who can’t sleep any better than she can.

The next day, she sees Rick from a distance, looking about as miserable as she is. She frowns, wondering if they have bags under their eyes for the same reason. Andrea talked about Rick with resentment in her voice, and there was distance between them even when Andrea lay dying, so that seems unlikely.

She spots Carl, then, the crease between his eyebrows strikingly similar to his father’s. He has his head down, averting his eyes as Rick turns to face him and calls his name. The boy walks past his father with the unmistakable theatrics of a rebellious child having a particularly bad day. It all makes sense, now.

It’s none of her business, she tries to tell herself, even as she itches to meddle. To help. She cares about Carl. Earning his trust on that little road trip of theirs was unreasonably difficult. Like father, like son, she supposes. No wonder she had to first earn the son's trust to earn his father's. She knows he was getting ready to kick her out, was pissed off that she hadn't told them about Andrea, looked at her like she was a bomb waiting to go off.

She follows Carl down the hall, and finds him lingering outside the library some of the Woodbury survivors have been setting up in a large room in cellblock A. He isn’t wearing his hat, and he isn’t carrying a gun. “Hey,” she starts, walking toward him, defeated by her curiosity. “What’s going on with you?”

He scowls at her, clearly not in the mood for a heart to heart.

She changes gears, casually leans against the wall next to him. She lets the silence hang in the air for a while. “What was the issue of Spiderman we found in that kid’s bedroom again?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Just curious,” Michonne shrugs back. There is a complicated art to this, interacting with traumatized, precocious children, and she's still getting the hang of it. “I’m looking for this one where the Green Goblin kidnaps spiderman and messes with his mind, you know that one?”

Carl shakes his head no.

“I think it’s an old one. So, what are you and your dad fighting about?”

He blinks, taken off guard. She is walking on thin ice here, but she learned recently that the only way to get through to this kid was to power through the hostility.

“Nothing,” he replies, scowl even more pronounced. “None of your business.”

“Did he take your gun?”

His scowl turns into a frown and he just stares at her, baffled. “Since when do you ask so many questions? You barely talk to anyone.”

“I talk to my friends.” She smiles when he looks surprised. “What? We got real close to dying together in that bar, and we shared a bag of chips on the way home. I think that makes us friends.”

“I guess.” His shoulders slump and his expression softens a little. “Sorry about Andrea," he says after a brief moment of thoughtful silence. "She was your friend, too, wasn’t she?”

Michonne sighs, swallows the knot in her throat. “Yeah. She was.”

“And…I’m sorry about––my dad,” he says, full of hurt and disappointment. “That deal he made with the Governor––”

She shakes her head. “He didn’t––”

“But he almost did.” Carl scoffs. “He pretends he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t.”

Michonne pauses. There is some truth to that, she thinks. “He knows some of the time. Just like me, just like you. It’s a new world, and we haven’t figured out all the rules yet.”

Carl looks unconvinced.

“Your dad saved a lot of people, too.”

“His people,” Carl spits, raising his voice. “The Governor’s! We’re just taking them in like it’s nothing! They’re the enemy. And he takes my gun like I’m the problem.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder and turns him to face her, “They’re not the enemy, Carl. Men like the governor…he saw scared, helpless people, and he took advantage. But it’s not their fault. It wasn’t Andrea’s fault. They don’t deserve to die because they’re a bad judge of character. They want to be useful here, they want a roof over their heads. Your dad’s made mistakes, he’s only human. But bringing these people in wasn’t one of ‘em.”

Carl looks at her in silence for a moment. He’s probably surprised to hear her talk so much, she doesn’t think she’s used so many words in a conversation for a long, long time. There’s just something about this kid, his vulnerability, that makes her do strange things. His expression slowly changes, softens, like he’s considering what she said. For the first time since she met him he doesn't look angry or frustrated––just terrified, sad. The raw emotion on his face catches her off guard.

“Carl?”

“I…I shot one of them,” he confesses shakily, eyes watering.

Michonne kneels in front of him so they are at eyelevel, and waits for him to continue.

“He pulled a gun on us. Judith and me and Hershel…we were hiding in the bushes…Hershel told him to put it down and he––he did, he put the gun down,” his voice falters, eyes red, “but he was one of them and––I didn’t want him near Judith, near Beth. I just wanted him gone, so I shot him. He didn’t look that much older than me.”

His wide blue eyes are anguished and close to tears, and for the first time since they met Carl isn’t a child pretending to be an adult. He’s just a child, scared and confused in a world no child should be in.

“When did you learn how to use a gun?”

“But I just told you I––”

“I heard you. Just tell me, when did you learn how to use a gun?”

He hesitates, gives her a suspicious look. This is when he resembles his father the most, Michonne decides, when he is looking at her suspiciously. Then he sighs, and answers, “A few months after they dropped the bombs. We were staying with Hershel and Beth and Maggie at the farm. Shane––” his voice catches, like he’s said something he wasn’t supposed to. “He was––he’s dead now. He taught me.”

She is tempted to ask him more questions, what happened to the farm, who this Shane was, how he died. But this isn’t the time. “Did he tell you what the hard part of shooting a gun is?”

Carl frowns at her like he doesn't get where she's going with this. “Hitting the target?”

She chuckles. “I’ve seen you shoot, kid, you’re a natural. No, the hardest part is deciding when to pull the trigger. You squeeze on one end and someone dies on the other. Making the right decision isn’t hard just because you’re young, it’s hard because you’re human. Yeah, you made a mistake with that kid. It will weigh on you, it should. But you won’t make the same mistake again.” She wiped the tear tracks off his cheeks, “you’re not a villain, Carl. You’re Peter Parker, not the Green Goblin.”

Carl looks at her, eyes still brimming with tears that he wipes furiously before they slide down his cheeks, and she holds back tears of her own. She used to like talking. She had been sociable, once, had liked holding a glass of wine at a party and making friends laugh. It seems like a foggy memory, now, a different person in a blissful state of ignorance that she no longer has the luxury of indulging.

But she can conjure up bits of that person she used to be to comfort this orphan, who's had his future stripped away from him, his nightmares come to life and is being held to impossible standards for his age.

“With great power comes great responsibility…” she quotes, “is that even from Spiderman or am I getting them mixed up?”

He rolls his eyes and laughs, and even if he’s just humoring her, it’s still more than she’d hoped to achieve when she came to talk to him. Getting him to laugh. It occurs to her suddenly that maybe this isn’t her place. Maybe she is setting a dangerous precedent, being the one he turns to when he is upset. What if he starts relying on her? He’s an orphan and she lost a child, but she can’t replace his mother any more than he can replace her son. She can be friendly, bring him comic books from her scavenging, talk to him occasionally, but she can’t take care of him, can’t get invested in this kid’s life. If she lets this get murky, she could be crying over Carl’s dead body in as the rain washed away his blood in an ironic twist of fate, history repeating itself because she wasn't smart enough to distance herself.

She volunteers to take over Glenn’s perimeter as a distraction from dark thoughts.

This is why she avoids human interaction as much as possible. Even this, being part of a community, feeling like a person, doesn’t really feel good as much as strange. Overwhelmed by contradictory feelings of joy and sadness, simultaneously happy and terrified, connecting with fellow live-and-breathing human beings she knows could die any day, like Andrea did. You’d think she would have learned her lesson, letting one person in just to watch her die a few months later, yet here she is with these people, Andrea’s words echoing in her mind. Nobody should be alone anymore.

The truth is, she almost misses the simpler times, chained to the groaning carcasses of Mike and Teddy, nothing to lose, nothing on her mind but food and shelter.

 _Almost_.

 *

The Woodbury survivors and other refugees they'd taken in have many questions for her. Where did you get the sword? How did you learn how to fight like that? What happened to your family? Some of them know better than to ask. The ones who have suffered more, lost more, the ones who have a better grasp of how to survive in this world, never carelessly invoke her past in casual conversation, just as she would never invoke theirs.

She very carefully avoids crossing paths with the baby. Little Judith, as the others sometimes refer to her fondly, or little asskicker, something Daryl came up with, apparently. Carl always calls her Judy, and it’s hard to keep from smiling at the way his shoulders straighten and he all but puffs up his chest when he talks about her, like he is trying to project some protective big brother aura.

Michonne stays as far away from her as she can. She dreads what it would do to her to look into the eyes of a child that young. The child rarely cries, but when she does, the sound puts a knot in Michonne’s throat, drowns out every other sound, and every time she blinks she sees flashes of her old campsite, her old life, her son dead in her arms. She usually makes up an excuse to take a walk outside the prison when the crying persists for more than a few minutes.

She manages to be discreet enough about her phobia that Rick doesn’t seem to notice she’s avoiding his baby daughter like the plague.

The she hurts her leg, and it is physically impossible to escape Judith when Beth begs her to take the baby for just a minute so she can change her puke-stained shirt.

Michonne’s heart is pounding and when she shakily extends her arms to take the child from Beth. She intends to hold the kid as far away from her as possible, the way one would hold a flailing wet cat. But the weight of an infant is instantly familiar, the warmth of her, the little sounds she makes as she protests Beth’s absence. If Michonne closed her eyes, it could be Andre she was holding.

Tears leak from the corner of Michonne's eyes, her body disobeying her. And so she gives in to muscle memory, lets her arms instinctively find the right way to hold Judith, supporting her back and bottom. Judith doesn’t meet her gaze immediately, still looking around the room for Beth, but then her blue eyes dart up to meet Michonne’s.

She quiets down, curiously looking up at Michonne, who hugs her close and weeps. Beth takes her time coming back, and Judith is almost falling asleep, her head resting on Michonne's shoulder, when Beth finally walks in with a fresh shirt on. "Sorry, I was tryin' to find a shirt with no blood on it. They're scarce these days."

Michonne has already wiped her face clean. She's careful not to disturb the kid as she hands her over to Beth.

"I knew she'd like you. She's real friendly, isn't she?" Beth whispers, smiling.

"Yeah," Michonne answers shakily, and closes her eyes. She thought she would break if she had to hold a baby in her arms the same way she used to hold her son, but she's surprised to find that, no, she’s still in one piece. She lets out a long, relieved sigh, sleep weighing heavy on her eyelids.

When she finally falls asleep, she dreams about Andre, and for once it's not a nightmare, it's the kind of dream it hurts to wake up from.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prison fluff + Aftermath. Hoping the reader will forgive some of the liberties I took with characterization, it's hard to make TWD characters have cute banter-y dialogue, but that didn't stop me from trying. Writing fic is hard, at first it's like I'm just playing with my favorite characters, and now that I'm actually posting this stuff it hits me that I'm playing with *everyone's* favorite characters... er, I'll try not to ruin them for you? Will be making some minor edits as I freak out throughout the day ;)

_\- Before S04E01 -_  
  
The image of the Governor’s one-eyed glare as he charges at her still haunts her in her sleep. This time she’s shielding Andre as he clings to her and screams, and she can’t get up to defend him or herself, can't move at all. She wakes up hyperventilating, heart pounding against her chest, dripping sweat. It takes what feels like an eternity to get herself under control, as if her mind and body don’t agree on whether the danger is real.  
  
Just as dawn is breaking she quickly slips her sword harness over her head, securing the scabbard over her back. The weight of it is comforting. Having her sword strapped to her body  helps subdue the feeling of powerlessness that these nightmares never fail to evoke. She goes outside, planning to sit in the grass while the community’s asleep, and wait for the sun to come up.  
  
She spots Daryl sneaking out the inner-fence gate with a backpack on his back, crossbow over his shoulder, guns and ammo tucked into his pants. He is looking straight ahead and doesn’t notice her. She instantly knows what he’s doing and where he's going, because she’s imagined herself doing the exact same thing.  
  
“Daryl,” she calls out, just loud enough for him to hear, low enough not to disturb anyone inside.  
  
He stops dead and whips around, an irritated expression on his face, and she can’t figure out if it’s because she startled him or if that’s just how he responds to his own name. “What?” he asks tersely.  
  
Michonne hesitates. She wanted to dance around it, talk to him about his brother. But he looks like he’s in a hurry, dead focused on a task, and the last thing he needs is someone he barely knows bringing up his the death of his brother, so she’ll just skip ahead and get to the point. “You found a trail?” she asks.  
  
He shifts his weight hesitatingly, but his expression is defiant as always. “Yeah.”  
  
“You’re going after him.” To avenge his brother, of course. Merle was far from the best of men, but Daryl is loyal to a select group of people, unconditionally and unwaveringly loyal. Michonne appreciates loyalty.  
  
He nods.  
  
“The others know anything about this?”  
  
He sighs, annoyed at being interrogated. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who likes having to explain where he’s going and what he’s doing, and they don’t even know each other that well. Everything about his expression and body language dares her to try and stop him.  
  
“I’ll go with you,” she says.  
  
He raises his eyebrows, surprised.  
  
“Two trackers are better than one,” she argues before he can reject her out of hand. “Especially when he’s had over two days’ head start…” If they find him, it’d be a miracle, she thinks.  
  
“Hasn't rained yet, tracks could be intact. Bastard didn’t have supplies, just killed a bunch ‘a his own people and fucked off somewhere. He's still gotta find water and a place to hole himself up and sleep, he can't have gotten far with this heat.”  
  
“That narrows it down a bit,” she agrees thoughtfully. “So we follow the tracks, scout places he might have found shelter.”  
  
He takes a moment to consider that and nods. “Go get your shit, then, I ain’t waitin’ long.”  
  
Michonne nods, “Give me five minutes.” She briskly walks back inside to pack.  
  
She’s hit with an unexpected wave of guilt when she thinks of Carl learning she left without saying goodbye, so she fumbles around the main storage room for a piece of paper. She wouldn’t be surprised if Daryl leaves without her if she tests his patience much longer––if he does, she’ll track him down. She can’t just disappear with no explanation. She tears a blank page off an old book – Anthology of Aesop Fables – curses when she can’t find a pencil. Instead she finds a box of crayons, and uses the blue one to quickly scribble,  
  
_“Carl –_  
  
_Went hunting with Daryl. Fingers crossed someone in those farmhouses out east liked Spiderman comics._  
  
_See you soon._  
  
_Michonne.”_  
  
  
*

  
They have to call a council meeting when Daryl and Michonne arrive from a weeklong search for the governor with a passionate disagreement about whether they should stay and help in the prison or keep looking.  
  
“Trail went cold,” is the full extent of Daryl’s argument. It looks like it costs him to admit it. Like everyone else at the table, he has his own personal vendetta against the Governor. The war with Woodbury cost him his brother, he wants to kill the son-of-a-bitch who did it. And Daryl is nothing if not persistent. If he is giving up, it was probably because he knows a lost cause when he sees one, Rick thinks.  
  
When everyone keeps looking at him expectantly, Daryl sighs and elaborates, “Douchebag’s either dead in a ditch somewhere or he found a car and fucked off to god knows where. Either way, no use lookin’. Me and her leavin’ like that, we leave y’all exposed. And we got enough shit to deal with here.”  
  
There is a moment of silence while everyone gathers their thoughts. Michonne sits quietly, expressionless. Rick looks at her and, not for the first time by far, wishes he knew what the hell is going through her mind.    
  
 “He’s got a point,” Glenn finally says, with some reluctance. “We have more people now, we need more supplies. Food, medicine. And we could really use you two on runs.”  
  
“Most of the folks we took in have no combat experience,” Maggie adds, “We need to train ‘em, need to keep ‘em safe, make sure they’re not a liability if shit goes down.”  
  
Rick agrees with her, but he has a feeling Michonne had her mind made up before she came in here and nothing they’re saying is going to change her mind. He leans in on his elbows, and everyone turns to look at him, surprised he has something to say. These days he rarely talked at these council meetings unless it was urgent. “Y’know, Carl gets worried sick every time you leave.”  
  
He thought that might have an effect on her, and he was right: she meets his eyes for a moment, then sighs. A brief moment ago she seemed determined, doubtless. Now she looks conflicted. Progress, he thinks.  
  
 “Anytime any of you are out there the rest of us in here are just holdin’ our breaths waitin’ for you,” Hershel says. Maggie puts an arm around him comfortingly.  
  
“Daryl should stay,” Michonne said. “You need him. But I’m not giving up the search yet. This isn’t just about getting even. I know the Governor better than you do. He holds grudges, and I know he’s not done with me, or Rick, or any of you. As long as he’s out there he’s a threat to your group––”  
  
Glenn cuts her off, “Whoa, wait a second, our group. We take care of each other. Why do you want to go on some suicide mission out there when you have your people here to watch your back?”  
  
Michonne looks taken aback. She has been caught smiling more and more since she joined them, but the natural display of emotion on her face as she smiles at Glenn still catches everyone by surprise, like they didn’t know she had that in her. “That’s all the more reason I want to kill him before he finds his way back to us,” she looks at Glenn pointedly, who nods his approval at her pronoun usage.  
  
“Maybe she’s right,” Carol interjects, “she took care of herself out there for a long time, she knows what she’s doing. If she thinks she can find him for us, let her go. She can cover more ground now that we got the horse. Assuming you can ride?”  
  
Michonne nodded. “I helped tame him.”  
  
“Well…you’re certainly not a prisoner, Michonne,” Hershel said. “If you’ve got your mind set on this, I say we give her the supplies we can spare, and discuss it again when she comes back.”  
  
Daryl scoffs exasperatedly like that’s a ridiculous idea. “I don’t care how long you spent out there on your own, goin’ outta these walls to look for that psycho with no trail and no one to back you up is pretty fucking reckless.”  
  
Rick agrees, but Hershel’s also right: she’s not a prisoner, so they can’t stop her.  
  
“You have to stay,” she tells Daryl. “They’re going to need you for the supply runs.” She glances briefly at Rick, and he knows they’re all walking on eggshells around him since he decided he wouldn’t go on runs anymore.  
  
He doubts she would listen if they took a vote and decided she should stay. Killing the Governor is too strong a motivation, he should know, he also entertained fantasies of going after the bastard. And one of the few things he knows about Michonne––having once held her hostage––is that she hates being locked up. She’d wait until no one was looking and jump the fence the first chance she got, he is willing to bet.  
  
“We’ll give you two weeks’ supply,” Rick proposed, “and the horse. But you come back,” he told her. “I don’t want to worry about my son running after you if a month goes by and you don’t show up.”  
  
She meets his gaze, and nods. “I’ll come back.”  
  
“Well, then,” Hershel says, “Any objections?”  
  
Daryl looks away from the table unhappily but says nothing.  
  
“Then it looks like we’ve settled this,” Hershel concludes, standing up, Maggie helping him with the crutches. “Meeting adjourned. Come on, now. We all got jobs to do.” 

*  
  
In the slower days at the prison, when people have time to waste, absurd gossip reaches Rick whether he wants to hear it or not. Most of the new recruits are assigned tedious jobs where it takes some imagination and creativity to pass the time. And so the Prison rumor mill begins. For some reason what seems to attract the most attention are the members of the so-called “council” –– Rick still wants to laugh at that, the legitimate-sounding name of their gang of misfits. Hershel can be counted on to know what he’s doing, but the rest of them are either too young to be leaders, too abrasive, too insane, too traumatized or any combination thereof. It’s a good day when Rick doesn’t see or hear things that aren’t there, a really good day when he’s not plagued by dark thoughts of impending doom.  
  
The gossip doesn’t bother him much, not now that they’re finally learning to stop turning to him for guidance, mostly leaving him alone. At the moment he has space in his mind only for his children. Judith was not old enough to give him much trouble but keeping Carl occupied and away from guns took most of his time and patience.  
  
The rumors reach him through Carl, mostly. Every day they do menial farming tasks together after Carl gets back from lessons with volunteer teachers, and they talk. Rick asks him about his comic books, his favorite characters, the best lines, sometimes he would summarize the plot of an entire story arc, and sometimes he’d tell Rick about some crazy conversation he’s overheard in cell block D, where they set up most of the communal areas for meals and, as, Daryl’s taken to calling it, “sittin’ around makin’ up shit.”  
  
Daryl is an object of fascination with the other kids. There seems to be wild speculation about the number of walkers he’s killed single-handedly, how long it takes him to reload his crossbow, even what kind of martial arts he has been trained in.  
  
“They think he’s some kinda Indiana Jones or something,” Carl scoffs, as if annoyed at their naivety.  
  
“I bet he’s enjoyin' the attention,” Rick replies sarcastically, trying not to dwell on the fact that his son seems to have outgrown children his own age.  
  
Unsurprisingly, whenever Michonne comes back from her searches, bags full of supplies and usually not a scratch on her, the focus of the prison population’s attention shifts to the mysterious swordswoman who never stays inside for more than a few days, and can survive all on her own outside the walls for weeks at a time.  
  
As soon as she comes in through the gates, Carl runs off to greet her, a big grin on his face. Rick follows him, taking a moment to smile and be relieved to see her in one piece. Doesn’t matter how many times she comes back, he’s still always somewhat surprised to see her. It's not just the civilians, he supposes, who find it hard to believe a person can survive on her own out there armed only with a sword and a handgun with no more than six bullets. Not only that, but she brought the horse back as well. For a long time now he has wanted to ask her if she’s ever been in the army, or had any combat training at all before all this. But he tends to avoid asking her unnecessary questions, since he knows that’s one of the reasons she goes out there so often––people asking her too many questions. She’s not one to share stories about her past with anyone, amicable as she is. And when he gets close to allowing himself just one question, he is uncomfortably reminded of that one time when he crossed a line with her, pressing down on her injured leg while shouting questions at her like she was a suspect, not a witness, and she rose to her feet, pushed him off, snarled _don’t ever touch me_. He is extra cautious with her boundaries now, though he still has some hope of finding a tactful, casual way to ask her if she’s had any combat training.  
  
He tried to talk her out of going after these searches for the governor – everyone had – to no avail. If Glenn or Maggie had decided to do something like this he would’ve helped Hershel tie them down until they came to their senses. But Michonne is different. For one, she is a grown woman while Glenn and Maggie are kids––no matter what they would say on the subject. He doesn't have any authority over her. It’s her choice to stay and go as she pleases, though he resents having to tell Carl over and over again that no, absolutely not, he can’t go with her to look for the governor.  
  
_Is that a katana on that black woman’s back?_ He overhears some new kid saying, openly staring. His friend replies, _Oh yeah, that’s Michonne. She’s the hot samurai chick who ripped off the Governor’s eye with her bare hands! They say she caught her girlfriend in bed with him, that’s how the whole war with Woodbury started––_  
  
Distorted truths and ridiculous rumors aside, it’s no surprise Michonne makes a memorable first impression. That steely gaze he saw through the fences never faltered as she fought for her life, piercing skulls and decapitating two, three at a time.  
  
When he reaches the two of them Carl is already flipping through an issue of Batman as she peeks over his shoulder, still holding the reins to the horse.  
  
“I can’t believe you don’t like Batman,” Carl tells her. “What’s not to like?”  
  
“Broody spoiled millionaire fighting crime for sport? I mean, at least Iron Man has a sense of humor. This guy takes himself way too seriously.”  
  
“But the joker––”  
  
“How about you two help me unload the horse before you get too deep into this argument?” Rick interjects, amused.  
  
“Hey,” she says, grinning. “You look terrible.”  
  
He makes a show of rolling his eyes as he unties the bags off the horse. “Don’t have any job interviews. How is it you look so clean?” There isn’t a drop of blood on her, no coat of grime covering her from head to toe. Rick knows he’s covered in dirt, hasn’t shaved in weeks. He usually doesn’t give a shit, but now that she’s standing there with smooth skin glowing in the sunlight he feels a slight pang of embarrassment. Like he’s wearing shorts and flip-flops next to a lady in a ballroom gown.  
  
"Found a lake,” she tells them with barely restrained joy. “More like a pond, and the water's icy cold, but it's clean at least…no floaters. Best bath I've had in ages.”  
  
"Is it far from here?" Carl asks eagerly. He and Rick carry the bags as she leads the horse inside, stroking its mane.  
  
"Fraid so, kid. It's a few hours on horseback, on foot it'd be a day’s hike. And about three days ago I spotted a herd, over a 100 of 'em, heading East, a bunch of them are spilling out into the highway. Best to avoid the area, don't want to risk turning them around on us. Just in case, tomorrow you should send some scouts to make sure they’re staying on course. I might know a route that should keep us safe and out of earshot, I’ll show you on the map––”  
  
“Daryl, Glenn and Sasha are handling that sorta thing, you can show them the map.”  
  
“Can I see the––” Carl starts, like Rick was expecting him to.  
  
“No, you’ve got homework, and your comic books, you’re all set,” Rick tells him in the fatherly tone he came to adopt after Lori died, calm and authoritative.  
  
Michonne takes a beat. “How about I show all of the uh, council members on the next council meeting?”  
  
Rick scoffs.  
  
“Yeah," she snickers. "Sounds like we’re founding our own prison state or something.”  
  
“But the people have taken to it, so..."  
  
“You’re a man of the people, now,” she teases.  
  
“I’m a simple farmer,” he plays along, corner of his lips betraying him. "Retired from field work."  
  
"You just want to raise your kids and grow your tomatoes."  
  
“Hey, Michonne,” Carl says, closing the issue of Batman he'd been flipping through as they talked. “Can you put this in my dad’s cell for me?” He hands her the comic and grabs hold of the horse reins, “I want to take Shay into the stable,” he strokes her mane fondly.  
  
Calling the wobbly wooden structure they tie the horse to with a long rope a “stable” is being rather generous, Rick thinks to himself. “Sure,” she answers, after taking a moment to glance at Rick as if to check if he had any objection.  
  
Michonne is always cautious not to take any liberties with Carl, as if she has concerns similar to Rick's about overstepping boundaries. At some point he should remind her she’s had his trust for a long time now. He almost traded her life for a ceasefire with Woodbury, and she somehow continues to trust him enough to stay with them––as long as she could stay put anywhere, that is. All things considered, she probably has more reasons not to trust him than the other way around.  
  
Michonne tries to take one of the bags from him, but he shakes his head and holds on to it. She laughs. “What, you being a gentleman?”  
  
“You came a long way. I’m being considerate.”  
  
“Thanks. Isn’t it odd that I can’t stay here and you can’t leave?”  
  
He frowns at her, caught off guard by the non-sequitur. “What?”  
  
“You’ve got your kids in here, I’ve got my one-eyed white whale out there.”  
  
“What about it?” he resists the urge to laugh at the one-eyed white whale remark.  
  
“Nothing, I’m just––surprised you don’t want to see the herd for yourself.”  
  
“You just said it, I’ve got kids here. Gotta make sure Carl isn’t skipping school or throwing shivs at walkers through the fences. Some kid got caught doin’ that last week. Said he got bored, can you believe it? And the thing is, I think that could’ve been Carl on a bad day. It’s so fuckin’ hard keepin’ an eleven-year-old busy, he’s not that taken to farm work––” Rick catches himself rambling. Michonne and Carl are close, so Rick has developed an odd habit of consulting with Michonne about Carl. Their conversations often take that sort of turn without him even realizing.  
  
“You mean Carl doesn’t find soil fertilization and growing vegetables fun?” she quips with mock surprise.  
  
“Well. He tolerates it,” he sighs. “Then he gets to read his comic books come end of day. Thanks for those, by the way,”  
  
“Oh, they’re not gifts. We share 'em.”  
  
“Thanks, anyway,” he grins at her. Each time she visits he makes up his mind to convince her to let go of her white whale and just _stay_. She’s good for Carl, he’d have some peace of mind if she joined Glenn, Maggie and Daryl on supply runs, who were reliably good at watching other people’s back as well as their own. She’d be safer here, and they’d be safer for having her here. There is also the less pragmatic reason: that he enjoys her company, and misses having her around, but that could be tricky to say out loud without coming off like––like one of these sleazy teenagers sitting on the grass, looking over their shoulders and blatantly staring at her ass as they whisper and giggle to each other.  
  
“Hey, don’t y’all have assignments?” Rick calls out, irritated. Was he that annoying at that age? He's barely over forty, but it's like he can't remember being that young. The trio look at him like deer caught in headlights. “If you already did ‘em, go talk to Maggie, she’ll give you new ones. This ain’t a resort, we all got jobs to do.”  
  
They're already on their feet and on their way, two of them looking surly while the older boy––John or James or something––shouts back, “Yeah, Rick, okay, sorry, man!”  
  
Michonne has an amused look on her face when they resume their walk across the lawn to the cell blocks.  
  
“What?” he asks, defensively.  
  
“Nothing, it’s just – I’m concerned you’re going to get a certain reputation.”  
  
“Reputation?”  
  
“Yeah. One day a new person will come here asking ‘who’s Rick’ and those kids will say ‘it’s that grumpy, no-fun man with the beard over there.”  
  
“I’m fine with that,” he lies.  
  
Maggie comes out just as they’re getting to the entrance to D, she and Michonne immediately smile at each other. “Nice to see you alive, stranger,” Maggie greets in a scolding tone. “I don’t know if I want to hug you or kick you in the shins for taking so long.”  
  
Rick clears his throat. “I’m going to take this stuff inside, you two catch up.”  
  
“Thanks,” Michonne tells him before he goes.  
  
"If those are my two only options, I guess I'll take the hug,” he overhears her telling Maggie as he walks up the steps and to the door. They're laughing when he closes the door, a rare, pleasant sound.  
  
They have a good thing going here. Maybe when they were wandering around aimlessly and stumbled upon this place, it was the future they were hoping for, a small community of self-reliant but cooperative people. And they’re safe here. Safe as anyone can be, at least.  
  
He breathes easy for the first time in months.  
  
  
_\- Post S04E09 "After"-_  
  
  
Carl is moaning incoherently, tossing and turning in his sleep. Rick promptly sits up, body and mind well trained to jump out of bed at the first sound of distress from his son.  
  
Michonne catches his eye in the dark and holds up one hand before he’s even finished pulling himself up. She heard Carl first, is already at his side, rubbing his back and whispering a string of words in a soothing tone. Carl settles down, his breathing slowly evening out, eyes never even opening.  
  
Carl had night terrors even before the world turned into a living nightmare. He would wake up sometimes panting and sweating from nightmares. Rick used to be able to help. A lot changed when Lori died and Rick was too insane with grief and self-loathing to be of any use to him. The last time Rick tried to comfort Carl in the middle of the night, put a fatherly hand on his shoulder, tell him everything was okay, the boy shrugged him off, furiously wiped the tear tracks from his face with a blood-stained sleeve, and turned to lie on his stomach, hiding his face.  
  
Michonne looks calmly back at Rick, rifle in hand. They were supposed to be splitting watch shifts equally. Whoever is on watch would sit on the dusty blanket next to the window, weapon in hand, doing perimeter checks every hour to stay alert. She somehow talked him into staying horizontal while his leg healed. He protested at first, but she was persuasive, pointing out he could fall unconscious any moment, leaving them exposed. It was hard to argue with that when the room was spinning. Between the three of them Michonne takes more than half of the shifts while Rick nurses his goddamned leg and drifts in and out of sleep.  
  
His mind is hazy as he stares at the open window just behind Michonne, facing the front yard of the house. With all of civilization gone dark, he can see entire constellations in the night sky, which isn’t much of a consolation prize for world ending, but it’s nice to look at, at least.  
  
A hissing sound brings him back to reality. She’s calling his name in a whisper, the sharpness of it suggesting she’s already had to repeat herself a few times. He blinks and tries to focus his oddly blurry vision on her. They allowed themselves one candle in the hallway, away from the window, but the moonlight was bright enough tonight that they needn’t have bothered. He can see Michonne’s worried frown very clearly, even as his thoughts are all tangled in a feverish haze. Her skin has a mesmerizing silverish glow as she moves closer to him, somehow managing to avoid the creaky floorboards. Always so silent, he thinks, and is struck again by the immense wave of relief he felt when he first saw her outside through the peep hole.  
  
He jumps when he feels a touch on his forehead, before he realizes she is just feeling his temperature.  
  
_Easy, it’s me._ The low timbre of her voice is comforting and familiar and he exhales sharply, feeling slightly less disoriented. “I think I have a fever,” he manages to say, mouth and throat too dry.  
  
“No kidding,” she replies.  
  
She puts down the rifle and reaches inside her bag for a water bottle. “Drink this,” she said, handing him the bottle. Then she stands up and walks out of the room. He wouldn’t have known she would be coming back if she hadn’t left the rifle and the bag behind.  
  
He swallows the rest of the water, sets down the empty bottle and lays back down. He tries to keep from shivering as he watches the specks of dust above him, exposed by the moonlight.  
  
Next time he comes to, it is daylight out, there is a cool, wet pressure on his forehead and a blanket covering him from the shoulders down, leaving just his injured leg exposed. He sits up, grunting with the effort, letting the towel fall from his head. He is in his shorts and there is a clean bandage on his thigh. Morgan flashes through his mind, the first time he’d depended on someone to patch him up like this. And his first night in the world the way it is now.  
  
“Dad?”  
  
Carl turns away from the window where he is keeping watch, holding the rifle. It never stops being strange, a child holding a weapon.  
  
“I’m fine.” He feels like shit, but he has enough people fussing over him. “You?”  
  
Carl comes over and looks at him suspiciously. Carl never takes anything Rick says at face value anymore. Those days are long gone. “I'm fine, too. Michonne went out to look for antibiotics.”  
  
Rick tensely shifts his weight. She is out there with the walkers by herself while he is only partially conscious. Carl would have no one to depend on if they both died.  
  
“We couldn’t just leave you by yourself,” Carl says, defensively, as if he interpreted his dad’s silence as judgment. “You were passed out. She said she’ll be back soon. She promised.”  
  
“I know, it’s okay,” Rick says, but it's a soulless reassurance, empty words that he doesn’t assign meaning to.  
  
Through the haze Rick notices Carl’s white knuckled grip on the rifle and realizes he is seconds away from deciding to run after her. He has to start talking him out of it. “Carl, she can handle herself,” Rick says, firmly, sounding more like himself. Michonne knows what she is doing, of course she does. Michonne always comes back. “We stay here and wait.” His effort to sound calm and authoritative goes down the drain when he has a coughing fit.  
  
“Dad?”  
  
“Fine,” he says hoarsely, holding up a hand to stop the boy when he starts to come closer. “I’m fine. Keep the lookout.”  
  
Carl pauses, scowling at him, and Rick is sure they would have started arguing by now if he weren’t injured and looking like shit, but, as it is, Carl takes pity on him and does as he is told. Goes to sit down on the folded blanket near the window.  
  
“You have to trust her. She knows what she’s doing.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean she can’t get hurt,” Carl says with a pointed look at the bandage.  
  
Rick has nothing to say to that. It makes him think of Hershel, how he had years of experience providing for himself and his family, could shoot to kill and save lives just as capably, was practical and efficient and had a much better grip on his own humanity than Rick ever did. He got killed over nothing––just some sick bastard who got off on terrorizing them. He can still hear Maggie screaming, the popping sound of gunshots everywhere.  
  
The knock on the door startles them both out of their reverie: two knocks, a pause, two knocks. Rick breathes a long sigh of relief while Carl drops the rifle and runs to open the door.  
  
Michonne looks exhausted, too many nights of lost sleep because of them, but she is in one piece, and she managed to fill a large bag with supplies, mostly food and medicine.  
  
“There was a house a few blocks down Main Street,” she says, a little out of breath as she sets down the bag. “Had some meds left in the medicine cabinet, and a handgun under the mattress, full mag.”  
  
At their look of disbelief, she shrugs and says, “bit of good luck was overdue. Your fever gone down?”  
  
“Think so.”  
  
Carl is rummaging through the bag she brought, amazed. “There’s still this much stuff out there?”  
  
“Carl,” Rick calls, sitting up straight. “One of us needs to be looking out that window. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll take over for you.”  
  
Michonne scoffs at that, but he gives her a look, a _please don’t contradict me in front of my prepubescent son_ kind of look. She rolls her eyes a little but keeps her thoughts to herself.  
  
Carl gasps and startles both of them, Michonne’s hand twitches like she was a millisecond away from unsheathing her sword. “You found a Mars bar?” Carl exclaims, unable to contain his excitement and totally oblivious to the fact that he nearly gave them both a heart attack.  
  
“Yes, I found a Mars bar,” she says, snatching it from him. “The last Mars bar in the world, for all we know. Let’s save it for a special occasion — like when your dad takes his first steps.”  
  
“The window,” Rick interrupts, exasperated but smiling slightly.  
  
Carl sighed. “Yes, fine,” he grumbled, and stomped on over to the window.  
  
Michonne crouches by the open bag, looking for something inside, taking out canned soup and toilet paper. He notices a tear on her jeans over the kneecaps, and a bit of blood.  
  
“Scraped your knee?” he asks.  
  
“It’s nothing,” there was no hint of pain on her face and she looked calm and collected as always.  
  
She found a bottle of amoxicillin, some painkillers. Even on the best of days that kind of loot was rare. If he didn’t know better by now, he would have called it a miracle. He still can’t shake the residual fear from a few minutes ago, when he was contemplating the possibility of Carl being left to fend for himself if they both died.  
  
“Doing a sweep by yourself on no sleep, no camouflage, no one to watch your back…you’re smarter than that.”  
  
“Been around some bad influences lately,” she holds out the water and pills for him. They stare at each other defiantly for a second, and then he takes the water bottle, swallows back the pills she risked her life for.  
  
“Shoulda taken Carl with you,” he scolds weakly, handing her back the bottle.  
  
She scoffs. “And left you here unconscious.”  
  
“If walkers broke in I'd have woken up.”  
  
“You were out cold, the house collapsing on top of you wouldn't have woken you up, Rick. Be still,” she kneels next to him and feels his forehead with the back of her hand. “I think it’s gone down, but you’re still warm.”  
  
She is covered in sweat, blood spattered over her shoulder and collarbone. Once again he averts his eyes from her lips, her neck. She's his friend, partner, he shouldn't be thinking of her like that. He allows himself to imagine the smooth, furious swings of her sword as she cut through rotting flesh and bone and makes a path to wherever she needs to go. The woman’s a force of nature. God, his mind is foggy.  
  
“You’re not taking over for him. You’re going to lie down here and sleep until your fever breaks.”  
  
“He’ll fall asleep.”  
  
“You don’t give Carl enough credit. He’s a clever kid, he’s got good aim and he listens to me…mostly. I’ll watch his back, he’ll watch mine, we’ll take turns sleeping while you recover.”  
  
He sits there in silence for a moment, frowning. “We need to get moving. This place is too exposed.”  
  
“First you need to be able to walk long distances, run if we get into trouble. Have you looked at your leg? You’re in no state to––”  
  
“I was in special ops, I’ve had worse than––”  
  
“Look, _Commander_ ,” she interrupts, the corner of her lips betraying her amusement, “I get it, you’re a tough guy. You don't have to prove it. If we go now you’ll slow us down, and the more you rest, the better our chances out there.”  
  
He can’t exactly argue with her logic, especially since his head is pounding. “Fine," he sighs, "have it your way.”  
  
She’s smiling slightly, halfway between amused and exasperated, and he never realized how much he appreciates these displays of emotion on her face until now, when the always-alert warrior drops her guard just enough that he could catch a glimpse of the person she used to be long before they met.  
  
He realizes he’s staring and looks away, shifting on the bed, turning to fuss with the pillow. “Wake me if––”  
  
“If I need you, you’ll know, Rick. Now, close your eyes and count some sheep, will you.”  
  
He swallows a hundred words and nods solemnly. She’s about to leave the room when he finds himself saying, “Michonne.” He can later blame this on the medication she gave him.  
  
“Carl and I…Just before you got here, I was tryin’ to tell him we’d be alright, just the two of us out here, but – truth is, if it weren’t for you we’d be screwed.”  
  
She pauses, eyebrows slightly raised, and he immediately feels stupid – he put her on the spot by saying out loud what she probably already knows. He must sound like a sentimental drunk.  
  
“I’m sure Carl would’ve figured something out,” she quips. He snorts, eyelids heavy with exhaustion. She inhales through her mouth and leans forward like she has more than a deflective joke on the tip of her tongue, but something stops her and she sighs, instead.  
  
“Get some rest, okay?” she tells him as she leaves to relieve Carl of his shift.  
  
Thoughts keep swirling in Rick’s mind as he tries to sleep. Michonne has a knack for surviving in hostile environments that reminds him a bit of Daryl. She took any excuse to leave the prison on her own when being around people was too much. Yet here she is now, looking after a child and an invalid. He remembers bringing her into the prison. Remembers the deadly fury in her eyes as she snarled _don’t touch me,_ remembers that he almost handed her over to a psycho bent on revenge. Remembers the Governor’s hands around his throat, close to strangling the life out of him when she stabbed his assailant through the chest.  
  
How many times does he owe her his life now, he wonders, and falls asleep before he can count.  
  
*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for the attempted rape of a child (from that horrifying Season 4B episode), discussion of trauma and child abuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that took a while. In my defense I've got a rough outline for the post-Alexandria stuff, and to my surprise, it appears there's going to be an actual plot. I actually just spent some time researching Southern U.S. geography and the history of bullet manufacturing. I've lost my marbles. How does one find a beta reader? I guess I'll have to research that, too.

**3**

Michonne goes to check on Rick just before dawn, crouching beside the couch to feel his temperature with the back of her hand. He’s breathing heavily and she worries his fever has spiked, but his forehead feels cool to the touch. He makes a choked, miserable noise. Michonne withdraws her hand but in a split second his eyes are open and he’s got a viselike grip on her wrist. “Rick,” she says gently, careful not to disturb Carl, who hasn’t had more than four hours of sleep for the last three nights. “It’s me.”  
  
His t-shirt is covered in sweat, and as far as she can tell, his temperature’s gone down. “Your fever broke,” she tells him, trying to keep her voice from straining as his nails dig into her skin.  
  
His eyes are wide as he looks around the room, alarmed and disoriented. His gaze finally lands on her. He blinks once and there’s flash of recognition in his eyes;he immediately releases her arm and leans away from her. “Sorry,” he says breathlessly like he’s been running for his life, and then runs a hand over his face. “I was dreaming.”  
  
“I know.” She’s tempted to ask what about, but these aren’t things they talk much about. She doesn’t offer him insight into her nightmares, so why should he?  “I'm sorry. I should’ve called your name before I touched you. Didn’t want to wake you.” It’s hard enough getting him to sleep.  
  
He waves her apology off, and pulls himself up to sit. “Did I – is your wrist okay?”  
  
She flexes her fingers, testing. “It’s sore.” Before he can apologize, she adds, “I’ll take comfort in the fact that your leg hurts much worse.”  
  
He snorts, but his breathing is still heavy, his shoulders tense.  
  
“Bad dream, huh?” she asks, tilting her head.  
  
He meets her gaze, breathing starting to even out. “Yeah,” he pants, and she realizes he seems to coming down from an adrenaline high, as if he had just been facing mortal danger.  
  
“I get them, too,” she says. “Vivid ones. Walkers tearing me apart, tearing my family apart, friends…”  
  
He nods. “Yeah. I guess it’s not just the kids.”  
  
“That’s what I told Carl. We all have ‘em.”  
  
They stay silent for a long time. She waits on a hunch that he has something more to say. “It was Maggie and Beth this time. You know. In the dream.”  
  
She frowns at him sadly. “You saw them and you couldn’t move to help,” she guesses.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The silence hangs heavily in the air after that. “Yeah, I hate those.” She has them almost every night.  
  
“You think they’re dead?” he asks her in such a low volume she can barely hear the question. “All of ‘em back there?”  
  
And there it is, the elephant in the room they’ve been managing to avoid for two days. She had a feeling he’d be the one to bring it up first.  
  
She wants to answer no. She wants to tell him that they’re all alive out there, and they’ll find their way back to each other. “I don’t know,” she answers. “We escaped, others might have. And…when I went back there the bus was gone. Could fit twenty people in that bus.”  
  
“You went back there?”  
  
She nods.  
  
“What for?”  
  
She sighs. “To see if any of you…any of us…” she smiles when she remembers Glenn correcting her every time she used the second person pronoun instead of the collective first, but the smile fades quickly. “…if any of us had turned.”  
  
Rick pauses, as if he’s not sure he wants to ask. “Did you––”  
  
“Hershel.” She looks away, the back of her eyes burning with the memory of Hershel’s glazed over eyes and snapping teeth before she sunk her blade into his brain.  
  
Rick hangs his head. “He would’ve thanked you.”  
  
“He wouldn’t want us to sit around reminiscing,” she says with a smile. “C’mon, now–”  
  
_“–we all got jobs to do,”_ they both say in unison, and exchange an amused look. Michonne wonders if she imagined his eyes lingered slightly on her lips before looking away, but dismisses the thought.  
  
“So,” he clears his throat. “I’m thinking we follow the train tracks north. If there are more of us out there they’ll probably be doin' the same thing.”  
  
“Sounds good. Let’s see how your leg’s doing in the morning first.”  
  
He looks like he might argue, but he bows his head in agreement. She stands up. “Night.”  
  
“Night,” he answers, and this is where she should turn around and leave, but her feet seem slow to take initiative. After a few hesitant steps, she stops and turns back to face the couch. “Rick.”  
  
He looks at her curiously.  
  
“I’d be just as screwed without the two of you. ‘Cause Andrea was right, no one should be alone anymore.” She doesn’t wait for a response; just turns around and heads for the front door to do a perimeter check.

  
  
*

  
Carl isn’t scared of much anymore, isn’t easily shocked or disgusted. He regularly fights with rotting, snarling corpses, broken bones sticking out of their skin, guts spilling out of their stomachs – they used to make him vomit when he was younger. Now even the smell barely bothers him. Just when he was thinking he was outgrowing fear, these men show up. The one on top of him is so strong Carl’s struggling only makes him laugh, his teeth yellow, eyes deranged.  
  
Carl had eavesdropped on Carol’s secret classes with the younger kids once, heard her tell them, “ _walkers are good practice for when you have to kill a person. To live in this world you need to do be able to do both.”_ Now he understands what she means. Walkers are predictable, simple; people aren’t. People are much worse.  
  
Nothing and no one has ever scared him the way this man scares him – scares him so much that he cries for his father, abandoning all of his pride, his commitment to not being just a useless kid anymore. All this time he was thinking he was getting stronger, he was learning, growing up, then this man drags him out of a car and he’s the six-year-old who used to sneak into his parents’ bed in the middle of the night again.  
  
Carl kicks and struggles and feels the man’s repulsive breath on his face and knows he is helpless.  
  
The loud sound of gun shots startles both him and the pervert, who stops pulling at his clothes. The next thing he knows he’s being dragged to his feet, a gun pressed to his temple. His attacker has an arm around his neck now, pulling Carl along as he backs away, tone increasingly panicked as he warns someone to stop. Carl doesn’t resist, body and mind numb with fear and humiliation. He can see bodies, everywhere, all of the thugs dead. Daryl and Michonne are both pointing guns at the pervert. Daryl, Michonne and his dad’s angry voices overlap, Carl can only make out a few words _drop it––let go––he’s mine._  
  
His father charges toward them, and when he steps into the light Carl can see that his face is covered in blood, his teeth stained red. He looks like a demon, like a walker. The pervert’s grip on Carl’s shoulder and waist weaken, and Carl pushes him off on instinct and dashes through the clearing as fast as his feet will take him. Carl runs straight into Michonne’s arms, eyes burning with tears he struggles to hold back. She hugs him close and covers his ears with her hands. He tries to close his eyes when the muffled screaming starts, but for some reason they won't stay closed. He watches unblikingly as his dad plunges a knife deep into the pervert’s chest, twists, pulls it free and does it all over again. And over, and over.  
  
His dad is _gutting_ the man who attacked him. Even when the man is long dead, his dad doesn’t stop. This isn’t about killing, Carl realizes, it’s just anger. Revenge.  
  
Even with Michonne’s hands over his ears, he still hears the stabs, the wet noises making him nauseated.  
  
*  
  
A long time ago, Rick called himself a Christian. He didn’t go to church often, but he believed in the sanctity of human life, believed in being a good Samaritan, forgiveness, generosity, loving thy neighbor, et al. It all seems so ridiculous, now. He’s come a long way from the oblivious sheriff who rode his horse straight into walker-infested Atlanta, clinging naively to the illusion that the same rules would apply in a world where the dead roam the streets.  
  
When he reunited with Lori and Carl it felt like divine intervention. _God does work in mysterious ways_ , he’d thought to himself, faith restored. But, over time, that came to sound more and more like self-indulgent bullshit.  
  
Walkers are an out-of-control pest problem: dangerous, disgusting and inconvenient, but nothing compared to the threat posed by these breathing, thinking savages. Sneaky sons-of-bitches lying in wait, predators looking to satisfy more than one kind of hunger. Maybe if he and Michonne hadn’t been malnourished and sleep deprived, they would have seen or heard them coming. A whole gang of them, how could they not have? He got too comfortable, let his guard down, chatting with Michonne near the fire like this was a fucking camping trip––and now he has a gun to his head.  
  
Daryl walks out of the shadows and Rick lets himself take a full breath for the first time since he felt the cold barrel of a gun against his cheek. There would be a way out of this if they can stall, he tries to tell himself. The next thing he knows Daryl is getting beaten to a pulp, Michonne fails to snatch the gangster’s gun and gets hit and pinned down in retaliation.  
  
And just when he thought he’d seen the worst kind of human depravity and nothing could shock him anymore, when he thought he had no faith in humanity left to lose, he stumbles upon something worse. It’s what’s in the eyes of these child raping thugs taunting him – but also what’s inside of him, the things he wants to do to them for groping his child, hurting his family, and the bloodlust only grows stronger by the millisecond. He used to be a Christian, a staunch believer and enforcer of law and order, and now none of it makes sense anymore.  
  
A brute is dragging his son out of the car, a sick grin on his face as Joe taunts Rick, _we’ll beat your buddy to death, then we’ll have the boy, then the girl._ His stomach turns, bile rises to the back of his throat. This is his _family_. Not just Carl, Michonne and Daryl, too. Like Hershel was his family, like Judith was his family, and so many more back at the prison. He’s not gonna lose any of them tonight. He can't. 

There are too many sounds. The men are laughing as Carl whimpers and calls for help, Daryl grunts as he is kicked in the stomach, over and over. Rick can’t hear himself scream over their sickening laughter and his own pounding heartbeat, but he can feel his vocal chords straining painfully, his chest tightening as he runs out of air. Dying can’t be worse than this. Watching his family be tortured, violated and humiliated by a gang of thugs as he obediently kneels in front of Joe. _Fuck this._ Rick will rise up and kill as many of these animals as he can before he goes down.  
  
He throws his head back, crashing the back of his skull over Joe’s face. The gun fires next to Rick’s face, missing him by inches, the noise piercing his eardrums so he can’t hear anything. He’s going to tear these people apart with his teeth, and then he is going to get that sick motherfucker off of his son and _mutilate_ him.  
  
And if there is a God, Rick hopes he’s watching, hopes he’ll see how easily Rick will break all the rules to protect his family from His deranged creations, dead or alive. Let it be a warning.  
  
*  
  
Michonne will not, can _not_ take her eyes off of the skinny guy pointing a gun at her, no matter how tempted she is to check on the others. He’s standing close enough to her that if he gets distracted for just a moment, she can move in and take his gun. She has tried and failed once, rushing a counter-attack out of desperation, and predictably got thrown back down on the dirt. She won't make the same mistake twice.  
  
Another moment will come, she tells herself, and hardly blinks for fear of missing it. He’ll look away, and she’ll rise up. She can already visualize the movements in her head, she can see herself grabbing this guy’s gun, killing him, using him as a shield as she shoots his friends.  
  
Carl is being dragged out of the truck, screaming, and the sound hits her like a punch in the gut. He trusted that she and his father would keep him safe, and they failed him utterly.  
  
Rick shouts at the top of his lungs, voice betraying his despair as the gang leader taunts and laughs and makes lewd threats against Carl, against her. Something about raping them both and making Rick watch. It doesn’t shock her. These men look like the sort.  
  
Still, every muscle in her body is tense, her heart racing. She doesn’t look away from the gunman. He scrutinizes her with a repulsive stare, a smirk twisting his lips. She doesn’t flinch, keeps her expression blank.  
  
In her peripheral vision, Carl is pinned to the ground as he struggles to fight off a man four times his size. Michonne keeps her eyes fixed on her skinny captor, but she stops breathing, muscles twitching with the effort to keep still. She grits her teeth, holds her anger steady, letting it accumulate. There will be an opening, she just has to wait for it, and let rage turn into fuel.  
  
A sequence of loud noises unlocks the opportunity she’s been waiting for: the sound of a collision, a grunt, a gun firing. The gunman’s focus wavers. His smirk fades, his eyes dart briefly to the right and back to her uneasily. There it is.  
  
Skinny turns toward the commotion with a confused frown, and time slows down, all noises fade to the background. She rises to her feet so quickly blood rushes to her head and obscures her vision. But she choreographed and visualized the sequence of movements in her mind so many times by now, she could have executed them with her eyes closed. With some help from the adrenaline pumping in her veins, she grabs and twists the man’s gun-wielding arm, knees him in the crotch when he tries to shake her off. His grip slackens and, just like that, his gun is in her hands.  
  
Chaos has erupted all around her. A brief moment ago they were trapped, outnumbered, surrounded, now all three are back on their feet, fighting for their lives and for Carl’s. One of the men raises his weapon at her, Michonne pulls Skinny in front of her just in time to catch two bullets as she aims over the kid’s shoulder and gets the shooter in the head. She kills another two in quick succession as Daryl takes care of the remaining pair with his bare hands.  
  
Finally, she is where she wants to be, aiming at the pervert who has Carl in a headlock as he holds a gun to the boy’s temple.  
  
Rick steps forward, charging past them. “He’s mine,” he snarls, looking savage, blood dripping from his mouth and chin. His eyes are fixed on the man who tried to rape his son, and his intentions are crystal clear. He’s going to tear the man apart. The man panics at the sight, and Carl doesn’t miss his moment, either, frees himself from the pervert’s grasp.  
  
Without a second thought he is running toward Michonne. Just like that her anger dissipates, replaced by overwhelming relief, she drops the weapon in her hands and throws her arms around the boy, taking a shuddering breath of relief as she holds him protectively. “You’re okay, it’s okay,” she whispers, trying to soothe him, but it sounds like she might as well be reassuring herself. He’s cold to the touch and shaking.  
  
She covers Carl’s ears to spare him the haunting screams of agony of the man Rick is eviscerating. She should feel disgust, some kind of moral uncertainty at standing by as this happens right in front of her. Her past self didn’t hesitate to condemn the inhumanity of torture, or capital punishment –– even for child molesters. She used to be so certain of everything, anchored to values she never thought she could discard, but she has no mercy to offer here: Rick can do whatever he wants to the man who tried to rape his eleven-year-old son. She isn’t going to stop him. She doubts Daryl will, either.  
  
*  
  
The blood drips from Rick’s mouth and chin and the tips of his fingers, it’s all he can taste, in his mouth and down his throat. His clothes were clinging to his skin, soaked. He drops the knife.  
  
It’s over. The four of them stand victorious, alive, surrounded by dead bodies. Daryl’s face is swollen and bruising already, if he doesn’t have a few cracked ribs it will be a miracle, and there is a miserable look on his face when Rick meets his gaze. It doesn’t take Rick long to realize Daryl blames himself for this, like somehow he had unleashed these demons on them. Rick would get around to convincing him otherwise. There was no doubt in his mind that Daryl would only have wounded up with these sick bastards out of necessity, not knowing what they were capable of.  
  
Michonne has her arms locked around Carl, who clings to her for dear life, shaking with fear, staring up at his father like he can’t recognize him.  
  
Rick can’t bring himself to feel shame. His heart is still beating too fast, his ears are ringing, his head is throbbing, but the pain and discomfort seem distant, dulled by the adrenaline rush. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows it’s only a matter of time everything that has happened – and what almost happened – hits him like a ton of bricks, but right now he can feel nothing but triumph and relief as he sees all three of them on their feet, in one piece. It gives him peace of mind to see the ones who tried to harm his family lying dead at their feet, their vile perverted souls hopefully burning in the seventh circle of hell by now. Plus, the gang’s supplies are now theirs for the taking.  
  
It took him a long time to get here but Rick finally understands this is what victories look like, nowadays. It’s not pretty, not glorious, it’s not good versus evil, it’s the guy who’s insane enough to bite off a man’s jugular versus the guy who would rape a woman and a child to get some deranged sense of justice. Everything’s measured in lesser evils now, and ruthlessness has to be met in kind.  
  
Carl is too young to understand.    
  
*  
  
  
Carl is clearly in shock, immobile and unresponsive as Michonne calls him over and over.  
  
“Carl? Listen to me,” she tries to meet his eyes, but he just stares off mindlessly into space.  
  
She turns him around, away from the body, away from Rick, who has finally exhausted himself and stopped stabbing his son’s attacker. “It’s over. It’s all over,” she keeps telling Carl. “We’re safe.”  
  
“He––he okay?” Daryl asks hoarsely, wheezing as he exhales.  
  
Michonne glances up at Daryl and notices he is leaning on one leg, face swollen, an arm holding his side. “He’s not injured, he’s in shock,” she answers.  
  
Carl doubles over and throws up on the curb, Michonne rubs soothing circles on his back, and glances at Daryl. He tosses her a canteen before she even has the chance to ask.  
  
“Thanks.” She gently hands the canteen to Carl. His hands shake as he raises it to his lip to rinse his mouth, spitting out the water and breaking out into a coughing fit. “Drink, Carl,” she instructs, “it’ll help, I promise.”  
  
He gulps it down, and the coughing stops. She sighs in relief. “He’s okay,” she tells Daryl. “What about you?” she asks him, noticing how his eyes were swelling and there were already signs of bruising on his chest.  
  
He tries to wave off her concern but she doesn’t miss the cringe he tries to suppress. “More worried about him.” He nods in Rick’s direction.  
  
Rick is kneeling over the body of the man he had stabbed to death, soaked in blood, seemingly no more aware of his surrounding than Carl is.  
  
“He’s in shock, too,” Michonne sighs, eyebrows creased in concern.  
  
Daryl crouches next to a body, gets a hold of a knife holstered to dead man’s leg. “Gonna make sure all the douchebags’ brains are popped,” he grunts, limping to the nearest body.  
  
She keeps a reassuring hand on Carl’s shoulder and doesn’t let Rick out of her sight as she talks to Daryl. “We shouldn’t expect more company? This is all of ‘em?”  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl confirms as he kneels and thrusts the knife into the skull of one of the corpses.  
  
Michonne glances at Rick then back at Carl, both silent and staring off into the distance blankly. “Daryl.”  
  
He stabs another dead man in the head and removes the dagger in one swift, practiced motion. “Yeah?” he grunts, voice strained with pain.  
  
“You’ll keep an eye on him?” She looks pointedly at Rick. “I’m going to take Carl into the car, get him out of the cold.”  
  
Daryl meets her gaze for a moment, and nods. She worries about Daryl, too, doesn’t doubt he’s downplaying his injuries and might need help bandaging himself up, but, short of a life and death crisis, Carl is her main priority for the next few hours.  
  
The boy has just faced the worst kind of depravity, violence on a different scale than anything he’s experienced in his already precocious childhood, and he needs someone to be with him. Ideally a parent, but since one is dead and the other one isn’t currently functioning, a friend would have to do.  
  
*  
  
She gently nudges him into the backseat, he doesn’t talk, but he lets her guide him, moving hesitantly, furtively glancing at his dad. “It’s okay, Daryl’s got him,” Michonne reassures him.  
  
Once they’re settled inside, she finds a bottle of water and a relatively clean shirt, uses the shirt in lieu of a rag, spilling water on it so she can gently wipe the dirt off of his scraped knees, clean his bloodied and bruised hands, his scratched cheek.  
  
“You put up a hell of a fight.” She inspects his hands and arms: he punched and struggled and thrashed so much he has bruises and scratches all over, knuckles swollen and bloody.  
  
“I couldn’t push him off,” he says, his first words in the last forty minutes, his voice hoarse and shaky.  
  
She’s so relieved to hear him speak she takes a moment to pick her words carefully, wanting to avoid scaring him back into silence. “He should have never laid a finger on you. I’m sorry we let that happen.”  
  
“I don’t – it doesn’t make sense. Why would he even…want to do _that_ – to – to a kid?”  
  
Michonne ignores the unpleasant combination of impotent fury and nausea that she feels being asked that question. She’s always answered Carl honestly, and she’s not about to stop now. “I wish I had an answer for you. I don’t know what makes a person do that. You need a very twisted and sick mind to want that, but people like that have always existed. What I do know is that it’s _not your fault_.”   
  
“But if I was stronger – ”  
  
“Carl, please, listen to me. He was three times your size. We were ambushed. You were asleep, and your dad and I were supposed to look out for you. They sneaked up on us. There isn’t _any_ part of this that is your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong, not a single thing.”  
  
“My dad…did you see what he did?”  
  
Michonne closes her eyes and exhales. She thought the worst of it over, if they could save him from that predicament any other obstacle would be a breeze in comparison, but she has a hard time remembering a conversation more difficult than this one. “They were monsters and they had _you_. We all did what we had to do.”  
  
“But – even after…he just kept – stabbing…over and over…”  
  
“That’s just––” she struggles to find the words. “The adrenaline…”  
  
“I’ve never seen him like that.”  
  
Michonne sighs and leans back against the seat, searching for words to explain something she understands purely on instinct. She knows the despair and the power rush of being so afraid for your child’s life you’re willing to do whatever it takes, no matter how extreme. How can she make him understand?  
  
“You’ve read the Hulk, right?” she asks. He frowns at her for a moment and nods once. “Well, that’s where they got the idea, rage so powerful it makes you stronger, more brutal, more reckless…He’s your dad and that man tried to do something horrible to you. He just _hulked out._ It's what parents do for their kids.”  
  
Carl wipes his eyes with his dirty sleeve, and yawns. “I - don’t know anymore…I’m just tired.”  
  
“I bet,” she reaches for the backpack under the front seat. She was going to fold one of them into a makeshift pillow, but he curls up with his head on her lap. She hesitates, torn between asking him to wait while she goes check on the other two outside and just letting him sleep however he wants to.  
  
He looks up at her. “Will – will you stay here? Just ’til the sun comes up?”  
  
And it’s decided for her, just like that, because she can’t say no to him, not when he looks broken and vulnerable like this. He has no one. His father is out of commission for now, his sister is dead, his mother is dead. Michonne is not going to be the next person to leave him.  
  
“Of course I’ll stay. Just get some rest, okay?”  
  
He turns on his side, legs stretched out on the backseat and his head on her knees as she runs a soothing hand through his hair.  
  
“You can sleep,” she whispers. "We're safe."  
  
She knows he probably won’t be able to sleep long, but she’ll be here if he has nightmares.  
  
*


	4. Chapter 4

**4**  
  
Daryl is pretty sure the bastards cracked two of his ribs. He feels a sharp pain in his ribcage as he inhales, but not so bad that he can’t breathe. If after all this moving around he hasn’t started choking to death, it’s a safe bet his lungs are fine. As a kid he got beat up almost on a weekly basis, so he has been walking this stuff off all his life.  
  
His face is swelling up, vision blurry from too many blows to the head, his stomach tender from being repeatedly kicked. The tip of some jackass’s boot grazed his throat and chin. If Joe’s crew had been just a little stronger, a little smarter, if they hadn’t underestimated who they were dealing with and made the idiotic mistake to draw things out instead of finishing it all at once, Daryl could have gotten a collapsed lung and a crushed windpipe by the time any of the other three managed to turn the tables, if they ever did. They got lucky.  
  
Dary watches as Carl doubles over and starts heaving, Michonne crouching dutifully by his side, stroking his hair back, keeping errant strands from dangling in front of his eyes. Boy could use some water. When he's done throwing up what little he had in his stomach to begin with, he rests with his hands on his knees, panting.  
  
Maybe _lucky_ isn’t the right word, Daryl thinks, as he absentmindedly tosses Michonne a water canteen he's snatched from one of the dead lackeys' backpacks. As if having to shoot his mother in the head and losing his sister wasn't enough, the kid gets groped by this fat thug of Joe's. Seems the world won't stop shitting on him.  
  
Michonne keeps one comforting arm around the kid’s shoulders and coaxes him into drinking the water. Carl seems totally disconnected from reality, in a shock-induced haze. He doesn’t say anything, doesn't even meet her eyes, but he listens to her, taking hesitant sips from the canteen. Daryl is slightly taken aback by the intimacy between them, Carl clinging to her like he used to cling to Lori a year or so ago, and Michonne seemingly having trouble focusing on anything other than him. She doesn’t leave the boy’s side. He would’ve expected her to be off doing perimeter checks –– that was the kind of thing she often volunteered to do at the prison, jobs that involved no talking and demanded all her attention. Daryl could relate.  
  
It occurs to him, looking at the two of them, that Michonne must have had a kid at some point. There’s something about a parent who has lost a child, Daryl can’t pinpoint it exactly, doesn’t know the words to describe it, but he sees it in Michonne, now, like he saw it in Carol.   
  
She leaves Daryl in charge of looking after Rick, who is just sitting there looking catatonic, breathing heavily and not saying a thing. It’s not the first time Daryl’s seen him like this, he was there when Lori died, and, since there was nothing he could do then, he figures there’s nothing he can do now, either. Waiting this out is his best plan.  
  
Once Daryl’s pierced holes through all of the corpses’ heads, bearing the pain in his side with gritted teeth, he drags them off to the curb, one by one. Carl doesn’t need to come out of that car and see this mess spread out here. He’d love to set the carcasses on fire if the light wasn’t sure to attract swarms of walkers from all directions.  
  
Rick’s a real sight, too, soaked in blood like he’s been bathing in it. He is gonna scare the shit out of the kid again if he doesn’t wash up.  
  
Daryl gulps down two mouthfuls of water, then silently sits next to Rick and sets the canteen down next to him.  
  
The sun should be coming up anytime, now. He wants to check on the two in the car, but he doesn’t really know how to look them in the eye. He’s almost relieved Rick isn’t up to making eye contact.

Daryl was traveling with those creatures, part of their fucking _crew_.  And he knew they were assholes from the start, but he had spent most of his life surrounded by assholes, so it felt familiar at first. That’s when he remembered what he’d already learned being around decent folks – that he wasn’t actually as big an asshole as his father or even his brother. So he decided to leave, try his luck out on his own like Michonne, but then he ran into that horrifying scene.  
  
Joe’s crew was far worse than the assholes Daryl was used to. But how would anyone understand that? Would Rick take him at his word that he didn’t know what they were? Now that was a rich mistake coming from him, the one with the reputation of a pessimist, used to seeing the worst in people, yet when it really counted he underestimated the most dangerous people imaginable.  
  
Daryl has missed his friends for a very long time, longer than he’d be willing to admit to anyone. Since he was left alone with Beth without any idea if anyone else was alive, he hoped against all odds that they would turn a corner one day and there they would be. It was terrifying, being responsible for a teenage girl grieving for her father. Beth was so small and breakable, so young and good. She didn’t belong in this hellscape, Daryl would often think to himself as he heard her hum a lullaby at night. Somewhere in the corner of his mind he could imagine what his brother would say to him. _If you think that scared little kitty can survive in this world, little brother, you got another thing comin’…girl’s a tragedy waitin’ to happen._

Rick should know about Beth. Maybe if Daryl starts talking, he'll answer eventually. Won't hurt to try, he thinks, just as the sky is turning a lighter shade of blue and the birds start chirping.  
  
*  
  
Rick is exhausted but oddly calm as he stands back, watching Carl and Michonne have a conversation in the plateau just below him, some tree branches obscuring his view. Carl had insisted on going with her instead of staying with him. Rick doesn’t blame him.  
  
Michonne hasn’t talked to him much. She looked at him in that characteristic, scrutinizing way of hers, like she was trying to decipher a code. Rick still can’t read her very well, can’t tell what’s on her mind––and not for lack of trying. It's almost like she's built for the apocalypse, well adapted to this environment, always thinking ahead, always alert, observant, carrying herself like a veteran, like she’s seen it all. Yet thanks to his cop training he's almost sure she’s at least a few years younger than him, early to mid thirties, he estimates. She must have been a person who smiled often, once upon a time. In the rare occasions when they had down time, when they still had the prison, the smiles came naturally, talking to Glenn, teasing Daryl and just recently in the train tracks, giggling with Carl.  
  
She _isn_ ’t built for this, no one is, Rick realizes. She had to figure out how to stay alive the hard way, same as the rest of them. One day she’ll tell him how she did it.  
  
He tries not to stare too much – if at all – but it hasn’t escaped his notice that she’s beautiful, a perfectly sculpted warrior with smooth dark skin and piercing eyes, a force to be reckoned with, the sword an extension of her body as she spins and cuts through flesh and bone effortlessly.  
  
Maggie told him she’d be an asset when he was still thinking she was dangerous and deceitful, possibly imbalanced, the way she was silent all the time––he should have understood that silence is a survival skill, nowadays. It first hit him when they were loading up the car with the ammo they had taken from Morgan, and she turned to him and said, sympathetically, _“you see things, too, don’t you."_ He really wasn't in a position to be judging anyone’s sanity.  
  
He doesn’t stand there keeping tabs on them, deciding to double-check the bodies on the ground for any weapons Daryl might have missed.  

“Already got ‘em all,” Daryl tells him, walking back to the clearing with a squirrel strung up over his shoulder.  
  
“Yeah…just keepin’ busy.” Rick eyes the squirrel. “Got a feeling I’m not gonna be the only one’s lost his appetite.”  
  
Daryl shrugs. “Still gotta eat.” He sits down on the grass next to their bags, sets down the dead squirrel.“So, uh. You said Michonne found you? Guess she can track better than I thought,” Daryl mumbles. “Thought she was wastin’ time out there looking for the one-eyed bastard. Now I’m thinkin’ maybe I shoulda listened to her.”  
  
Rick sighs. The amount of guilt Daryl's taken on, it's as if he had bombarded the prison himself and then sicced the rapists on them, just for good measure. “Nah, Daryl, the trail went cold. Michonne kept lookin’ for the needle in the haystack ‘cause she’s Michonne, she’s stubborn. You’ll just drive yourself crazy thinkin’ of what you coulda done. Believe me.”  
   
Daryl doesn’t answer, which Rick takes to mean he’ll at least consider this next time he feels like dwelling on the past.  
  
Rick stands up and walks over to the top of the hill to check on Michonne and Carl, leans against the tree there just in time to see the two of them exchanging a few words before she pulls him into a hug.  
  
Rick isn’t ready to untangle the mixed feelings of relief and gratitude and this irrational, bitter feeling of exclusion. He hates himself for the pettiness of it, but he’s slightly afraid this connection of theirs means that neither of them need him as much as they need each other. He chalks it up to exhaustion and forcefully pulls himself out of that train of thought, turning around to walk away.

  
**Terminus**  
  
Michonne is sick of getting captured. It’s been happening far too often.  
  
The moment she’s forced to drop her weapon, she is putting all of their lives at the whims of these people, these strangers who lured them here. She exchanges ominous looks with Daryl and Rick, who look every bit as pissed off and desperate as she feels. The fact that these people haven’t killed them yet somehow doesn’t bode well.  
  
In the darkness of the train car they’re shoved into, she hears familiar voices. She’s sleep-deprived and hasn’t had much to eat, so she thinks it’s her imagination at first. But, no, sure enough, there is Glenn and Maggie and Sasha, and one of the newer recruits – Bob, was it? And four more faces, strangers. They fade into the background, she can barely see them, still mesmerized by the sight of _Glenn_ and _Maggie_ and _Sasha_. She played up her optimism for Rick––she never thought she would see them again.  
  
Then, again, when she left the burning ruins of the prison she never thought she’d see Carl and Rick, either, so she shouldn’t be so surprised.  
  
_“––screwing with the wrong people,”_ she vaguely hears Rick growling with characteristic bravado.  
  
She shares his determination, she’ll do anything to get them out of here, but she wonders where he gets all that confidence. She can’t see a way out of here that doesn’t involve some kind of miracle. Their captors were heavily armed and organized, she counted at least twenty of them during their failed escape attempt. The metal walls of the crate look secure, no way out. And when she looked into their eyes, earlier, she couldn’t find any sign of a conscience to be reasoned with. She doesn’t know what they want, but something tells her they’re being kept alive for a very specific purpose.  
  
As her eyes get used to the darkness she sees Maggie and Glenn more clearly, as joined at the hip as ever, practically moving in sync. Maggie’s big green eyes betray a bit of her fear, but she holds her head up high, scowling. Glenn clenches his jaw and nods. Rick is certainly effective at making all of them spoil for a fight instead of standing around, scared and hopeless.  
  
Michonne’s gaze lingers on Maggie as Glenn introduces the new people. Hershel used to say Beth was the one who took after him – Maggie, he said fondly, was the spitting image of her mother. If Maggie inherited anything from him it was her stubbornness, Hershel claimed. And Michonne can see it clearly now, the same defiant iron will Hershel had shown in his last moments.  
  
It has long preyed on her mind why the Governor had taken her sword and killed the helpless old man instead of the hostage who was actually a threat to him. She wonders if that same question has haunted Maggie these last few weeks.  
  
Maggie’s eyes flicker from Carl to Rick and Daryl and finally land on her. They look at each other for a heartbeat, and then Maggie walks briskly past Glenn and Rick and throws her arms around Michonne.  
  
“Thank god,” Maggie says tearfully. “I didn’t see – I thought he killed you, too.”  
  
Michonne fights back tears as she shakily raises her arms to return the hug. “I killed him,” she says.  
  
“‘Good. I hope it hurt.”  
  
“It did.” She doesn’t want to say she’s sorry for her loss. It feels like a hollow and pointless thing to say. “I made sure it hurt.”  
  
Hershel was killed, Beth was taken, but Maggie is here in front of her, and Michonne will be damned if she lets anything happen to the only Greene she can still protect.  
  
*  
  
They come and take Daryl, Rick, Glenn and Bob at gunpoint. She holds Carl back as they escort them out. Maggie bursts into tears, Sasha punches the metal walls, crying out in frustration.  
  
Michonne goes back to finishing the improvised makeshift spear she was making out of scraps, feeling numb. She sits close enough to Carl to keep an eye on him but doesn’t bother trying to distract him. She couldn’t if she tried, and she really isn’t in the right mindset to console him. She doesn’t know if he’s going to see his dad again, and lying to Carl isn’t a line she’s ever crossed before, and she's not about to start now.  
  
Maggie paces anxiously, Sasha eventually sits down and shuts herself off from the rest of them.  
  
There’s too many things Michonne doesn’t know, so she tries to focus on what she does know.  
  
The moment she hears voices outside she’s going to jump to her feet and do her damnedest to rip the head off of the next guy who tries to take any of them. She wasn’t ready when they came for Rick. Next time they come she’ll be ready.  
  
The car shakes as the shattering sound of an explosion startles all of them, including their captors, judging from the screams and panicked shouts coming from outside.  
  
Here it is, she thinks to herself, the miracle she’d known they needed to get out of this hellhole.  
  
*  
  
When Rick opens the door, Michonne doesn’t have time to be relieved he’s alive. _Fight to the gate._ She kills everything in her reach with the makeshift spear, making sure to keep Carl directly in front of her.  In the chaos and smoke her eyes flicker from Carl to Maggie, Rick, Glenn, Daryl, Sasha, afraid she’ll lose sight of one of them in this mess. She’s not letting them get separated again.  
  
Carol turns out to be their miracle, giving them their only chance of escape. She shows up camouflaged with a rifle in her hands and an urgent look in her eyes. Daryl runs to throw his arms around her, and it’s the first time Michonne has ever seen him cry. Even Rick seems to get choked up talking to her, and she notices guilt in the way his shoulders slump, the way he looks down to his feet every so often.  
  
And then Carol leads them to Tyreese and Judith. Sasha bursts into tears hugging her brother, who matches her sob for sob. Rick cries holding his daughter, and Michonne’s eyes are brimming with unspilled tears as she watches, awed at the sight of the three of them, Carl, Rick and Judith. Rick looks wrecked, like the relief is overwhelming. Michonne can only imagine. Carl is smiling, letting Judy wrap her tiny hand around his thumb.  
  
For a painful moment she wishes she could be in their place, wishes someone had been taking care of Andre all this time and she’d get to hold him like Rick holds Judith now, like his daughter has returned from the dead.  
  
This group has a way of finding their way back to one another, it seems.  
  
* 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Told from Michonne's POV up to S05E08. Michonne bonds with Judy as she, Carl and father Gabriel wait for Rick&co to return from a rescue mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, that took me a while, sorry. I haven't been doing great, personally, and TWD's latest season has been pissing me off in so many ways...but that's all the more reason to dive into my fluffy, hurt/comfort-y headcanon! Oh, I had to make a few edits, I moved the last section of chapter 4 to this chapter because I didn't want to mess with the chronological order of Church events. Thank you guys so much for the kudos and comments. Inspiration to write is hard to come by, so it's really encouraging to know there are people enjoying this. Please do keep commenting, and don't be afraid to be critical if something bothers you! I'll do my best to reply to every comment.

**5.**

**Church**

  
Michonne feared it would take a long time for him to recover from the horror he’d faced in those woods and Terminus, but being reunited with his sister has an immediate, visible effect on Carl. It’s like he snaps back into big brother mode without missing a beat. Around his sister, he is less the damaged boy she tried to console that dreadful night and more like a wiser, hardened version of the boy she brought comic books for in the prison days.  It makes her breathe a hard-earned sigh of relief.    
  
That afternoon, Maggie, Glenn and Tyreese all approach Rick to offer to watch Judith at night so Rick can sleep. Carol and Michonne stand a few feet back, meeting each other’s eyes and exchanging a knowing, half-amused look, Carol scoffing as she shakes her head. They both know Rick isn’t letting go of that baby anytime soon, so they don’t even bother.  
  
Michonne has a different approach in mind.  
  
Closer to sundown, she catches him alone with Judith while Carl is off with Maggie and Glenn.  
  
“Hey,” she says in a near whisper, cocking her head to look at Judith’s sleeping face resting peacefully on her father’s shoulder. She looks so calm, her oblivious serenity contrasting sharply with the worried creases on Rick’s forehead.  
  
“Hey,” he answers, stroking his daughter’s back absentmindedly.  
  
“Is it just me, or does she look heavier than––”  
  
“It’s not just you,” he half-smiles, “she’s bigger. Not sure how many pounds, but seems to me Carol and Tyreese fed her better ’n they fed themselves.”  
  
Michonne smiles at him. “Look at you. This is the closest to beaming I’ve seen you.” Her eyes burn a little. “Rick, I can’t even––” She stops herself before the lie escapes her lips. _Can’t even imagine._ She _can_ imagine, she’s been imagining it all this time. “I’m so happy for you,” she says instead. “For Carl.”  
  
His lips tighten underneath all that beard, he looks down at his feet briefly. “Thanks,” he says, choked up.  
  
There’s a moment of silence while they both swallow the knots in their throats. “Listen,” Michonne starts, putting him out of his misery by changing the subject. “I was thinking about the sleeping arrangements.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“How about you take Judy, I take Carl, tonight? Opposite corners, so they don’t wake each other up.”  
  
Rick looks hesitant and squirmy at her suggestion, so she sighs and crosses her arms, bracing for an argument. “I know you don’t want either of them out of your sight. But Carl’s still gonna wake up with nightmares.” They both know Carl’s nightmares are accompanied by moaning at best, screaming at worst. “We’re better off dealing with one crying kid at a time. Out of each other’s earshot, they stand a better chance of getting some sleep. The rest of us, too.”  
  
He sighs and adjusts his hold on Judith, bouncing her on his hip gently as she starts to slip. He knows he can’t argue with Michonne’s logic, but he’s still going to be a stubborn bastard, she can already tell.  
  
“I was really hopin’ I could give you a break from all the babysitting now that we’re with our people…”  
  
Michonne is hurt that he’s not past all this ceremony, irrationally upset that he’d ask anyone other than her to watch Carl when she’s been by the kid’s side for what feels like forever. Maybe it was presumptuous of her to assume she’d earned some kind of permanent role in Carl’s life.  A small, insecure part of her wonders if reuniting with the others is going to erase the partnership they developed when they were out there on their own. Wonders if she misunderstood Rick when he told her Carl needed her, wonders if he took her seriously when she told him she was done taking breaks.  
  
She hesitates. “Well. You want me to ask Maggie, instead?”  
  
“Nah. Wouldn’t work. He wakes up like that, no one can get through to him…And that was before. Now,  after…everything…it’s gotta be you.” He casts her an apologetic look. “You sure you don’t mind?”  
  
She can’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I’m the one suggesting it.”  
  
“Right. Yeah. I’m just…sorry to put so much on you.”  
  
She shakes her head, frustrated. “I’m not doing you favors, Rick. I’m doing what I want to do.”  
  
He frowns at her, expression too complicated to interpret, then he finally nods.

She sighs. Carl, she can handle just fine – Rick’s the difficult one.  
  
*  
  
He catches her eye when she’s sitting with Carl, signals toward an empty room. He wants to talk in private. In front of the group he made a big show of needing time to decide what to do about Beth, but she knows right away they’re going with Daryl to rescue Hershel’s daughter, how could they not? She can see the determination in his eyes already, and doubts it took him longer than two seconds to decide.  
  
“So, when do we leave?” she asks as soon as he closes the door.  
  
He looks confused.  
  
“We’re going to get Beth and Carol, aren’t we?”  
  
“Yeah, we are,” he nods and looks down at his feet briefly. “But I was hopin’ you’d stay.”  
  
She frowns at him like he’s talking nonsense. “Why? I want to get that girl back as much as—”  
  
“I know, but listen. We have some good fighters out there, but they’ve got very little experience at this sorta thing, and from what that kid Trevor is sayin’ we’re gonna be fightin’ cops, so I need to be there. I can’t send y’all to fight cops while I stay behind with my kids…but I – I just got Judy back, and Carl’s been through hell…I can’t leave ‘em unless I know for sure––” he clenches and unclenches his jaw, probably considering all the awful things that could happen to Carl and Judy in his absence, “…unless I know that they’re with someone I trust to keep ‘em alive, and that ain’t a very long list. So I’m asking you. Please.”  
  
Michonne is so used to taking point, walking in the frontlines with Daryl and Rick, it hadn’t even occurred to her that she wouldn’t be with them when they mounted this rescue. But now she begins to understand the predicament he’s in, with Tyreese and Carol gone. They have an infant who needs constant protection, a stranger who needs to be kept an eye on, and Carl, who is precocious but not as self-reliant as he thinks he is. On some corner of her mind she is aware of the weight on her shoulders, the overwhelming burden of being responsible for the lives of his children in this kind of world. Mostly she finds herself fiercely in agreement—she should be the one to stay with Carl and Judith. She doesn’t trust anyone else with them, either.  
  
“Yeah. I’ll stay.” Rick takes a relieved breath, and nods. It’s only because she knows him well that she understands this conveys gratitude, “We’ll bar the doors and windows,” she goes on. “You’re not taking the priest, are you?”  
  
Rick scoffs. “…trust that man about as far as I can throw him,” he mumbles. “Something he ain’t tellin’ us.”  
  
“But it’s not just that. He gets on your nerves,” she notes, intrigued.  
  
“He – he talks too much. Quotin’ bible verses at me. I gotta wake up to the sound of him recitin’ the lord’s prayer fifty times.”  
  
“Well…” she licks her lips, trying not to smile, “he’s a preacher, that’s kind of what they do.”  
  
He snorts. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight.”  
  
“I’ll keep an eye out,” she says. He’s being paranoid.  
  
“He tries anything––”  
  
“I’ll tie him up.”  
  
He shakes his head. “No, I’m sayin’ don’t waste time with any of that, just finish him off if it comes to that.”  
  
The way he’s talking, it’s like he hopes she’ll take the first excuse to chop off the preacher’s head. “I’ll use my own judgement if it comes to that,” she retorts, a little more sharply than she intended. She softens her tone when she clarifies, “Rick, you just said you trusted me––so trust me.”  
  
Rick meets her gaze evenly, eyebrows knitted together in a complicated pattern, and nods once. He changes the subject. “Hey, uh. You don’t mind changing cloth diapers, do you? It can get a little...messy.”  
  
The question makes her stomach drop, bringing back flashes of painful memories; the old campsite, trying to keep Andre still as she loosely tied the knots around his waist. She pushes them to the back of her mind, does her best to keep her expression neutral as she answers, “No, I don’t mind, I’ve done it before.”  
  
He nods, scrutinizing her with his gaze for a moment. She’s afraid he’s about to ask her the question she’s been dreading. “She’ll be fine,” he says, instead, and a weight is lifted from her shoulders. “Hershel used to say she eats like a horse, sleeps like a rock.”  
  
“And cries like a hyena.”  
  
“She’s got a healthy set of lungs,” he admits.  
  
She snorts “Like Maria Callas. The opera singer,” she explains, at the puzzled look on his face.  
  
“Ah,” he raises his eyebrows. “So you like opera.”  
  
“We’re getting off-topic,” she points out, shaking her head and trying to hide her amusement. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry ‘bout the preacher, I’ll keep him in line.”  
  
He looks at her, and she can see the worry weighing on his shoulders, so she keeps her back straight and makes sure he sees no uncertainty in her posture or her face. Acts as if the future were entirely in her control.  
  
It isn’t, of course, and if something happens to his kids on her watch it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t forgive her – she wouldn’t forgive herself. But the only way he’s going to get out of this church and get their people back is if he has faith in her, if he knows the kids are safe.  
  
“Yeah,” Rick sighs. “I do trust you, that’s not––” he says. “I just –” he rubs his forehead uneasily. “I’m leaving you with three charges to look after––”  
  
“I told you, I can handle––”  
  
He shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m worried about.” He sighs. “I don’t like leavin’ you with no one to watch your back.”  
  
“Carl can watch my back,” she answers dismissively. But she can still sense his uneasiness, so she lets words spill out of her mouth as they come to her. “I don’t like this, either. You out there without me. I know Daryl’s got your back, but I’d feel better if it were the three of us. This time, though…splitting up is the right call. For the kids, for Beth and Carol. Your plan’s solid, Rick, and it’s the best we’ve got.”  
  
He looks down at the ground, exhales, “yeah.” His tone isn’t confident, but when he looks back up, his shoulders set in a straight line, he looks resigned. Determined, even.  
  
_That’ll do,_ she thinks.  
  
“This is not gonna be a habit, you know. I’m staying home with the kids just this once,” he laughs at that. “When you rescue our people,” she continues, dead serious now,  “you and I’ll go back to watching each other’s back.”  
  
“That was always the plan.”  
  
“Okay, then.”  
  
He groans. “Now I gotta tell Carl.”  
  
They exchange twin looks of dread.    
  
*  
  
Carl takes the news that his father is leaving on a dangerous rescue mission and not taking him along surprisingly well. Michonne expected some kind of resistance. She was ready to play the little sister card, tell him he needed to stay to help her protect Judy.  But clearly the kid arrived at that conclusion without any help from condescending grownups.  
  
Carl listens to the plan, nods as they explain who’s going where and who’s staying behind. On his face there's the scowl and clenched jaw Michonne has learned to expect from the Grimes men. All he says is " _okay_." Just like that, " _okay_ ," no questions, no arguments.  
  
Judith starts fussing behind them, where Daryl is awkwardly holding her in the back of the church, trying to distract her with a dirty stuffed toy. Without another word, Carl goes to his sister, leaving Rick and Michonne looking stunned and slightly confused.  
  
Rick raises his eyebrows at her, askance, and she shrugs at him.  
  
“He’s growing up fast,” is all she has to say.  
  
She figures the boy's worried sick, just like the rest of them, but he knows when to pretend to be fine for his dad’s sake.  
  
It's awfully mature of him, but it breaks her heart a little.  
  
*

It's finally dawn, and Michonne watches from a respectful distance as Rick says goodbye to his daughter, planting a soft kiss her on her head––she has a lot more hair, now, Michonne notices, remembering the baby she held in the prison, a bald little thing with just a few strands of blond hair.  
  
Judith grimaces slightly when Rick’s beard prickles the soft skin on her forehead and Michonne holds back a smile. Maybe when Judy is old enough she’ll do them all a favor and convince her father to finally shave off the hairy monster on his face.  
  
It’s the break of dawn when Rick hands Judith over to Michonne, who hasn’t gotten to hold her much lately. It occurs to her that the baby’s at the right age for separation anxiety just as she bursts into tears, following Rick with her eyes and whimpering pitifully as he moves away to rustle her brother’s hair fondly. Rick ignores the sound of his crying daughter with a heavyset jaw, muscles tense with restraint as he pulls the church doors closed.

His eyes meet Michonne’s briefly in the closing gap of the doors.  
  
He is not hard to read, especially now that she’s gotten to know him better. The defiant, stubborn look just before the doors slammed closed was particularly easy to interpret. He was reminding her that this was definitely not goodbye.  
  
Then he is gone, and she stands there with a crying Judith in her arms, Carl by her side staring worriedly at the closed doors. Father Gabriel can be heard  in the back muttering incessantly as he paces back and forth. _“…hallowed be thy name…kingdom come…be done…”_    
  
Michonne bounces the crying baby on her hip as Carl looks back at the priest, a confused crease between his brows. “What’s wrong with him?” he whispers to Michonne.  
  
“He’s just scared,” she whispers back. “Ignore him.”  
  
Judith wails, sobbing inconsolably. “He’s coming back soon, sweetheart,” Michonne tells her in a soothing tone as she rocks her gently and wipes her eyes and nose with her free hand.  
  
She hears Carl grunting, and looks up from the baby to see him lifting a large piece of wood by himself.  
  
Michonne sighs, eyes darting from the nervous priest to Judy’s bassinet. If only she had an extra eye or an extra arm, this would be a much easier task.  
  
She’s forced to put the baby down on the pile of folded clothes cushioning the bassinet, hoping Judy’s tired enough to fall asleep on her own. The crying grows louder when she is left alone. An echo of a distant memory distracts Michonne for a fraction of a second: closing the nursery door as Andre screamed in protest in the early stages of sleep training. Back then, she would tear up with guilt at abandoning a child in such clear, loud distress. But she’s hardened enough since then that now she can brush it aside to focus on what needs doing.  
  
Once she and Carl have been boarding up the doors for about fifteen minutes, the sound of Father Gabriel pacing back and forth muttering prayers suddenly stops. She looks over her shoulder to see him carefully approaching them. She makes sure the second board is secure enough to hold, and moves away from the door, putting herself between him and Judy’s bassinet.  
  
She blames Rick for the paranoia, all that talk about not letting him out of her sight. She doesn’t even share Rick’s apparent prejudice against clergy, but she hardly knows this man, and he does seem somewhat unstable.  
  
Father Gabriel hovers awkwardly and looks at Judith with that perpetually haunted look in his eyes.  
  
“Is there something you need?” Michonne asks him, an icy threat hidden just under the surface as she tightens her grip on handle of the hammer, letting it dangle near her thigh. Carl is three feet behind her, Judith less than one. She can make it to the priest before he even thinks of attacking either of them. If she ends up having to bash his skull in, she’ll drag him away first, away from the baby. They’ve managed to keep Judith relatively clean all this time, that baby’s not going to get spattered with blood and brain matter if Michonne can help it.  
  
Father Gabriel raises two open palms in a gesture of surrender, like he can tell where her mind is going. “I kn-know we don’t know each other, but – I – I would never harm a child,” he tells her, and his horror at the thought seems genuine.  
  
There were probably children outside begging to be let in when he let his parish get torn apart and eaten by the dead, some dark corner of her mind reminds her.  
  
“I––just thought I’d sit next to her while I pray. Maybe she’ll quiet down if she doesn’t feel so…alone.”  
  
Michonne has been watching him carefully for a long time. He’s a cowardly man, completely unreliable in a crisis––but he also seems harmless, like he wouldn’t know how to cause them harm even if he wanted to. She glances at Carl to see if he has any objection to this, but he just nods quietly and gets back to work on the doors.  
  
“Fine,” Michonne says. “You can sit there.” She points to a spot near Judy’s bassinet where he’d be in her sightline.  
  
She follows him with her eyes, standing motionlessly as he moves to sit with his back against the wall opposite Judy’s bassinet.  
  
Judy is sitting up, pitiful sobs shaking her entire body as she clutches the edges of the bassinet. The sound of the hammer makes her wince.  
  
“Cover her ears,” Michonne tells the priest. “The noise is bothering her. We’ll be done in a few minutes.”  
  
“Right, yes. Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on her,” Father Gabriel answers, scooting forward to cover the baby’s ears with his hands, shushing her softly.  
  
“Her brother and I will be right over here.” This threat is even more thinly veiled than the last one. It’s not that she doesn’t believe he means the child no harm, but it doesn’t hurt to remind him that his life is entirely in her hands.  
  
As soon as she and Carl finish, they move in tandem to check the bassinet only to find that Judith’s fallen asleep. Father Gabriel leans against the wall opposite her, his eyes closed, clutching praying beads and muttering under his breath in a monotone that probably proved soothing for a baby.  
  
“She’s asleep,” Carl marvels.  
  
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Michonne says. “I’m going to check the windows, you got her?”  
  
“Dad checked the windows twice before he left.”  
  
“I know, but I’m a fresh set of eyes, maybe I can catch something he missed.”  
  
“If you say so,” he answers, his skeptical tone accusing her of being paranoid. She doesn’t blame him. She has an unsettling gut feeling that something’s about to go wrong; something always does. The silence rings in her ears, like the quiet before a storm. This feeling is not new. It comes and goes in tidal waves since long before she became responsible for Carl and Judy’s lives.  
  
Carl takes it upon himself to teach Father Gabriel some basic self-defense as Michonne keeps his sister company. Tyreese and Carol had a small stock of formula from their scavenging. And, in the group’s somewhat disastrous supply run yesterday, they got some tiny jars of baby food: various mashed fruits and vegetables. Thankfully, Judith was indiscriminately enthusiastic about food, she’d eat anything happily. Meals seemed to put her in a better mood and soothe her anxieties.  
  
Michonne feeds her a few spoonfuls of apple sauce when she wakes up. For the first time, she gets a goofy, satisfied smile out of her as she happily swallows the sweet gooey mess. Michonne’s heart skips a beat as she returns the smile, the sense of accomplishment almost enough to drown out the worry and untie the nervous knots in her stomach.  
  
“Carl, your sister just smiled at me.”  
  
“She’s smiling at the food, not at you,” Carl teases.  
  
“Shush.”  
  
*  
  
Judy won’t go back to sleep, even after Michonne feeds her a carefully rationed bit of Carol and Tyreese’s modest supply of baby formula. Her little blue eyes look alert as she drinks from a bottle whose nipple seems to be frustratingly tiny, making her use all the muscles in her face to suck the milk out.  
  
Michonne finds it hard not to smile at her scrunched up little face, the annoyed crease between her barely visible eyebrows as she focuses on her task as intently as if she were solving a puzzle.  
  
Andre was a fussy eater. Michonne used to have a complex feeding ritual involving music, spoon airplanes, a very specific selection of stuffed animals and constant encouragement. Judith just gulps down whatever she’s given with so much impatience she needs to be slowed down lest she give herself a tummy ache.  
  
An alarming sound startles her out of her reverie. She and Carl both whip their heads toward the sound simultaneously, recognizing Father Gabriel’s voice coming from outside of the church.  
  
Michonne curses under her breath as she sets the baby down in a hurry and grabs her sword, following Carl to the blocked entrance. The priest is banging furiously on the door as he screams for help, and her ears are well-trained enough that she can pick out the walker snarls beneath his screams. _Why didn’t he just stay put._  
  
There’s a split second in which she hesitates, a million thoughts going through her mind. Carl is already racing to tear out the boards keeping the doors shut, determined to save this man he barely knows save for a history of repeated screw-ups and an inability to contribute any skill of value.  
  
Rick’s words ring in her ear. “ _…If it comes down to that, just finish it.”_  
  
The risk of walkers spilling into the building with Carl and Judith inside makes a very strong case for letting the man die out there. On the other hand, she contemplates having to hold Carl down as they heard the desperate pleas of the man who babysat his sister just a few hours earlier, and she finds herself tempted to abandon the cold pragmatism that has served her so well all this time.She doesn’t want to deny Carl the chance to save someone’s life. She was the one who told him he was supposed to be a hero, not a villain. After everything, how could she make him do this, stand by and let a man die when it was in their power to help? Surely even Rick would have to understand wanting to preserve the boy’s humanity and compassion – he was the one who spent so much time and effort keeping his son away from guns and violence after the incident with the Woodbury kid.  
  
With a split-second decision, she dashes forward and helps him tear off the boards from the doors, already formulating a plan. They had another room to evacuate to, and she had made a swaddle for the baby in case they had to run. If they were overrun, she might be able to break a hole in the wall so they could escape – or maybe that damned priest knew another way out of this church.  
  
She can do this. She can save them all.

She _has_ to.  
  
*

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is interested in being a Beta reader for this project do contact me through private message here on ao3 or @totonyo on tumblr, I'd love to have someone more experienced than I am (which is almost anyone, I'm sure) tell me how I can improve.


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